Q:What is Tyba?
A:Tyba is a recruitment platform for companies. It basically

covers all the junior sector. So any company that wants to fill a junior position can use our platform to search and filter through junior candidates that we have in our data base and. On the other hand, it also allows junior candidates to showcase all their professional potential so not just academic and professional trajectory but also personality, organizational fit and all kinds of intangibles.

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Q:How did you come up with the idea?
A:There are two sides of the business. The user part we came up by seeing that we were not able to really showcase all our professional potential with our paper CV or through our Linkedin page. On the other hand, we were talking to companies and they were saying they did not use Linkedin for junior recruitment.  They state this because of the same reason, the information Linkedin provides is so scarce. Is not an efficient way to actually filter through candidates. Big companies like JP Morgan or the BBVA get thousands of applicants and if they all look the same there is no way they can say we are going to interview all of them or  guarantee that this 20 they select are actually the best ones since they cannot know with that little information. So they were really eager to have a tool where they could actually find a lot of junior talent and be able to asses it properly.

Q:What are the challenges you faced?
A: In the beginning we piloted the idea a lot until we hit the sweet spot. So basically what we faced was something most startups face. You have some assumptions and until you go and test them or validate them you don´t know if those assumptions were right or wrong. You can build a lot of research but until you go out to the market you don´t really know. This is something I feel is very important. You have to be very flexible with your idea. You have to treat it like your baby but you shouldn´t be too stubborn with it. Is not like if ideas can’t evolve, you should be open to piloted and change it over time.
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Q:What does your business bring new to the market?​
A: Up until now all we have seen are companies that aim at the niche of junior recruitment but they do it in a very traditional way.  They are either a job posting sites so there is a regular job post you send you Cv or your Linkedin like profile. So we have this added value that on one side we have all this extra information that users are able to input to the site. On the other hand, we also have the difference that we are not a job posting site. So you can have a talent contest which is something similar to a job posting but is not quite the same. Additionally, you have this recruiters were the company can search for different candidates. So it becomes an active talent search instead of a passive one. So yes, it might take the company more time to invest in but on the other hand the results they get are much better.
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Q:Do you have agreements with recruiters and companies?
A:We opened a platform to recruiters 4 weeks ago and since Friday we got around 50 companies on board.  Before that we already had companies like Accenture, DHL, UniCredit bank and so forth. We have companies all over Europe. Right now since we had an article in Expansion (Spanish newspaper) we got a lot of Spanish companies. So most of the companies we have right now are Spanish but we have companies all over Europe and we are willing to focus all our efforts in two hot markets that we have identified which are Amsterdam and Munich. We want to focus on these markets because there is a high demand for skilled labor so we see a huge opportunity there in terms of companies. Also, taking into account that we have candidates all over Europe especially from countries where there is a high supply of candidates we can match that over supply with the demand.

Q:How does the agreement work between recruiters and companies?​
A: We have 2 tools. One tool is the Tyba Recruiter which is an access to our data base where you get filtering, search and organizing tools to find the candidates. This works in a subscriptions base. Companies subscribe to it pay a monthly fee and have unlimited access to the data base.
Then we have the Tyba Scouts which makes use of our ambassadors. Those are basically paid for one position. A company needs this one position they give us the specifics they are looking for. We pass it on to our ambassadors and they search in the universities they have been assigned to. Right now we have more than 100 ambassadors in Europe throughout 40 universities. Also, we ourselves search in our data base and then we deliver the candidates to the companies.

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Q:How did you finance your business before setting agreements with recruiters? What was your initial funding?
A: We financed it ourselves by investing 60,000 into it.

Q:Is the business profitable yet, or still breaking even?​
A: An Internet business it's all about the scale, so all our revenues we reinvest in growth. Therefore we don't plan to be break even any time soon.

Q:What are your hopes for growing/expanding your business?​
A: We are thinking of expanding our business to Singapore and Australia. These are  T​wo good markets in terms of demands for labor and salaries. Moreover, take into account that the higher the salaries the higher the companies are willing to pay for this type of services. So these two markets are very interesting and are probably our next markets after Holland and Germany.

Q:Where do you see the company in 5 to 10 years?​
A: In 5 to 10 years we would love to be THE RECRUITMENT platform for junior talent so really be the Linkedin at a global scale for junior talent.
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Q:Who are your main competitors?
A: Our main competitor is not Linkedin because we can totally coexist since companies are not using Linkedin to recruit young talent. So it’s other companies that are trying to get into this niche that are more of our competitors.

Q:If you could give people that have ideas but have problems concretizing an advice what would it be?
A: The most important thing is to really get a good team behind it. At Tyba I think our biggest asset is the team. We are a very diverse team and a team that is extremely committed.  I see a lot of people launching startups that take their 5 best friends and they go and start working on it. At Tyba the founders we were kind of best friends (Eiso, Phil and me) but we have very different backgrounds. Eiso know how to code, Phil has very good contacts in Germany and I have them in Spain.  I have more of a financial background and Phil knows more about marketing and this kind of things. But I see a lot of people who go four finance students or four engineers and create their startup and that is a pity because they are not adding value to each other. So it is very important to have a very diverse team that is extremely committed to the project and that actually cares about the product.