I didn’t think Monster could top its own stupidity after buying Affinity Labs for a ridiculous $62 million in cash earlier this year. However, they undoubtedly did top themselves today after announcing the acquisition of fairy dust matching technology provider and vertical job search engine Trovix for an OMFG $72.5 million.
Seventy-plus million for Trovix? Really?
Really?!?!?!?!
Couldn’t Monster have saved a few bucks and just built something themselves? I mean, they apparently have $72.5 million for the project.
I reviewed Trovix in 2007 and interviewed CEO Jeff Benrey in spring of the same year. As a result, I feel I have a fairly good grasp of the company’s offering.
I have nothing against the people at Trovix. Good for them. They have a decent technology that might have some legs given the right amount of time and leadership. But what they’re droppin’ ain’t worth pickin’ up for $72.5 million bucks.
Unless you’re Monster, I guess.
(Sidenote: Trovix ownership has to be farting rainbows and burping unicorns in complete bliss as I write this post.)
According to a release put out by Monster, “The implementation of the Trovix technology will enable Monster to provide employers and job seekers with innovative search capabilities that will simplify the recruiting process by providing highly relevant, targeted search results.”
Trovix technology promises to algorithmically match job seeker and company without any extra steps, aside from the typical post resume/post job format. As their site says, “Trovix understands the true context of the information on a resume and included in a job description and instantly identifies the best qualified candidates for that specific position in a way that no other search technology can.”
Unfortunately, job seekers have to register before seeing full job descriptions - typically the mating call of the über-desperate candidate - so I’d be skeptical as to how much on-field time the technology has actually had with, like, top talent. As one industry old-timer put it, “You go to their site and they try to capture all your info on the first page. What is this, 1997? We want to spam you.” Jobs are spidered, making the need to actually be a client negligible, so as a result it’s doubtful their roster of clients is worthy of a significant test case of current or future success.
And as far as buzz goes - which does matter - Trovix is on no one’s hot list. Ever heard a company brag about its experience using this service? Me neither. They don’t exist. I don’t care how many company logos or Wall Street Journal clips Trovix puts on their site.
No doubt a company rep or one of the few Monster fans left will come out and cite how many ways till Sunday I’m wrong, but I’m confident time is on my side. This will go down as another big flop in Monster’s portfolio. Maybe the biggest.
Someone, please save this sinking ship. It’s starting to make all of us look bad.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Trovix is way ahead of its time and sees things differently than the rest of us. Maybe this matching stuff isn’t just snake oil. Maybe their technology will save Monster from doom and revolutionize the recruiting industry. The possibility is there and the gamble’s worth taking, right?
Not for $72.5 million.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:40 am
Wonderful expressions of gobsmackedness Joel !
I am in awe of those Trovi. We work ourselves silly year in and year out to make a few (maybe) measly millions satisfying thousands of users, and those guys talk a good game right onto easy street. Its enough to make me feel like McCain.
I met them at the ERE Expo in San Diego, 2006. Nice crew, fully dotcommed- full on promotional person with no clue as to what business the company was in, with her sales crew of tech-weenies to the max- they could not help themselves from showing us every last feature @ nasa level of detail.
I walked away thinking how challenging it would be to build an ATS business (they were thinking only of ATS only at the time) around the one feature that was strong (search). Their client base appeared to be a clique of big brains (MIT focus if IIRC) and the whole thing was all very cerebral.
Later they pivoted away from ATS and into a consumer type Job Board deal-no surprise since their ATS was a shell.
I know people go nuts for the automated resume processing- for bad reasons that only work out in a narrow situation, but that’s a whole post in itself- maybe next week.
72 million dollars for a freaking resume parser has my wheels turning.
This deal may have something going on in deep background. Friends of Monster may have needed some liquidity and since public common shareholders are made for ritual abuse and slaughter, this could be a way to do it.
If its at face value, it is going down in the annals of teh stupid.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:52 am
Was there this much pessimism when Microsoft bought Powerset? That was a search engine that only searched Wikipedia…badly. And it was bought for $100m. $72 mil seems like a comparative bargain.
I’ve been fairly dismissive of Monster for a while, but you have to admit, at least they’re trying new things now. If they’re right (and it’s a big if), this will pay off significantly.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:22 am
I was watching your site to see when the next Monster bashing would begin. While Monster is investing in new technology, announces game changing plans for its seeker site etc, CB etc are doing nothing. The CB site is so outdated, it’s embarrassing. For a reporter, you’re not very objective..
August 1st, 2008 at 9:26 am
Don’t you think all the Silicon Valley VC’s smelled blood (or a sucker) once Monster paid 60 million clams for a company with a customized version of an open source content management system? Word is out that executive suite at Monster is clueless and can be sweet talked into anything.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
It seems to make sense for a job board to buy better resume search technology?
August 1st, 2008 at 9:48 am
Monster could aquire Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Careerbuilder and Joel would (with his infinite business knowlege) call it stupid. It’s only because Monster bought it. Have another donught, cheezeball.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am
on the one hand, it looks like monster is finally getting its act together by focusing on appropriate issues — on the other hand Joel is right to wonder why monster would consider buying a company in beta with questionable prospects for 72 million.
Unfortunately, this is going to motivate a whole crop of new bells and whistles ventures: see http://www.internetinc.com/Too-Many-Job-Ventures
99% will fail and in the process confuse, harass and overwhelm HR managers. oh, what fun.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
For all of us spending millions of investor dollars and all our waking hours building newer and better ways of connecting job seekers and employers, this verifies that there is demand for the incumbants to buy newer systems where they can migrate their existing user base. I say great for monster and Trovix…Congrats!
August 1st, 2008 at 10:24 am
Wow - MNST has a long history of grossly overpaying for companies, but an even sadder history of neglecting them once purchased. If Trovix was bought for 5MM it would have been a gift and MNST pays almost 80MM. Even if Trovix was the next coming (which I don’t think it is) MNST will do what it always does with acquisitions, add a monster logo to the company’s site and then choke off all money and revenue that would have otherwise helped with growth and R&D. They’ll starve the child company till it dies. Remember the other long list in MNST’s death march: simpatix, flipdog, microsurf (monstermoving), now trovix? etc. etc.
Congrats to trovix though - you landed a giant, brainless whale.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Mr Cheese - I’m a bit confused by the deep haze of Monster hatred you spew. I read your review of Trovix a while back, and reread it now as well. It was very positive and to quote “…This solution solves this problem, at least on paper. If this works like they say it does, we have a buzzworthy product on our hands. Now they just need traffic.”
Wow - that’s your own words - were they “stupid” words as you now say nothing good about them since the Monster purchase?
The recruiting world is changing quickly and technology is the key, so whoever has the best technology should win, and one thing Monster does have already is traffic…
August 1st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Max - trovix is a nice little product - Not worth 80MM bottomline -
August 4th, 2008 at 10:03 am
When you are cash rich, unable to grow your own business and your share hoders are srcreaming for better performance, you buy new assets hoping that they will add to the revenue stream and give higher returns on your investment. Monster must have followed this classic route! Good for Trovix. They can now retire to Fiji!
August 4th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
“(Sidenote: Trovix ownership has to be farting rainbows and burping unicorns in complete bliss as I write this post.)”
Wow, that’s clearly an intelligent comment.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Martin Snyder wrote: “72 million dollars for a freaking resume parser has my wheels turning.”
Trovix resume parsing technology is provided by Sovren. If that’s Monster wanted, they would have bought Sovren. Although Trovix search technology is built on top of Sovren parsing (after having given up on the other vendors), their searching and matching makes great use of that structured and semantic and contextual data in ways that others have not (except maybe Sovren, which sells its own semantic matching engine). Nevertheless, Monster also acquired an option to license the Sovren source code.
August 5th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I dig your site completely and have read for a while. I usually agree with your bashing of Monster all the way as I’ve been affected by the layoffs that happened last year…But this here is just Marge Simpson “esque” nagging. What link can I be directed to where I can read the origin of the negative history you have with this company? LOL; I mean, who at monster defecated in your Wheaties???
August 5th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I think its cute how Joel has his little obsession with Monster. The funny thing is that without bashing Monster his blog would be just another blog like all the rest.
So in a way he actually owes Monster a big thank you for giving him something to whine about all the time.
:)
August 5th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Thanks for that info Bobdog. We are working on a custom project for a customer with the Sovren solution as an element, so we are about to learn a lot more about it. This deal still makes my head spin…
August 6th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Martin Snyder Says:
August 5th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Thanks for that info Bobdog. We are working on a custom project for a customer with the Sovren solution as an element
==============================
So, you are about to add $72.5 million in value!
August 6th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
thats a good first year estimate Bobdog ;-)
August 7th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
@Kreedos - Cheeze doesn’t have anything particular against Monster. Today it’s Monster, tomorrow he’ll swing back to bashing CareerBuilder.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Why does Joel pick on Monster so much? Look at the number of comments from this post. Pretty simple math kids - Chad
August 11th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Joel ‘picks’on Monster because he is not afraid to think or say negative things- unlike the sizable number of people in our business who take anything less than a fully displayed wide fake smile in ANY situation is unprofessional at best, if not actually subversive and Un-American.
Monster making this deal was newsworthy, and someone thinking that it was a poor move seems to me to be a fairly reasonable position; no hate speech required.
As to which posts encourage comments, simple math would appear to suggest that Joel is not making content decisions based on comment potential, since most posts only have a comment or two.
You here the same stuff about stock shorters, yet they provide important market information by playing their roles well.
September 1st, 2008 at 6:34 am
“Unfortunately, job seekers have to register before seeing full job descriptions ”
Man, that aint even true! Have you even been on Monster? At least get your facts straight before bashing them!
It’s a hell of a lot of cash for a small company. Probably too much. But if the technology is used in the right way and it’s a benefit to people looking for work, then what’s the problem?
September 10th, 2008 at 3:33 am
An important matter sometimes forgotten is the potential and value of matching technology in HR. While the majority of job boards and erecruitment systems still under perform heavily in terms of functionality and performance when it comes to finding the correct job or candidate easily, some of them are investing in integrating this technology in order to keep up with the changing expectations (and requirements) of the customers/users. I don’t say Trovix is worth the money, I also don’t say they are not worth the money, but sometimes it’s not the company you buy with it, but the enhancements to your own services you buy. It’s is the difference between price and value. Compare with Microsoft buying Fastsearch for 1,02 billion USD.. And nobody talks about that?
There are about 5 companies in the world who specialise in enhanced search and match technology with a focus on HR: Trovix (now Monster), FastSearch (now Microsoft), Actonomy, WCC, Autonomy. In HR consolidation and acquisitions are bound to happen.
Sometimes it’s also better to buy someone so you can keep the technology for yourself. So price is also determined by the strategic value.
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November 5th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I’ve SEEN what this is going to do.
Trovix *is* way ahead of its time and sees things differently than the rest of us. This matching stuff isn’t just snake oil. Their technology will revolutionize the recruiting industry.
Y’all a’int seen nothing yet…
November 6th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Hmmm, doesn’t CareerBuilder already have something like this? Their recommendation engine seems to do this stuff. Guess we’ll wait and see.