The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Strategic decision · 2015–2017
Whoishiring.io relaunches as a paid business after its #42 all-time Show HN
A solo map of Hacker News 'Who is Hiring' postings grew to about 15,000 jobs from 22 sources, then relaunched in January 2017 as a paid job-board business.
Whoishiring.io
What the business is
Whoishiring.io is a web service that maps tech job listings from Hacker News' monthly 'Who is Hiring' thread and about 22 other sources onto an interactive world map; revenue came from paid job postings and a planned paid monthly ATS synchronisation subscription.
How it started
Sebastian (xando) launched whoishiring.io around August 2015 as a side project to see where tech jobs actually are, scraping Hacker News' monthly 'Who is Hiring' thread onto a map with a map-search tool he already had. The first Show HN was very well received and ended up as number 42 on the all-time top Show HN list, and the volume of feedback gave him the idea and motivation to push the project forward.
What happened
Over the next 1.5 years he expanded from the single HN thread to about 22 sources and 15,000 jobs, adding remote and visa filters, international boards and ATS APIs, then decided to turn the side project into a business. The monetization announced in the thread: importing HN postings stays free, posting directly on the site costs money, internship postings stay free, and synchronising with ATS systems such as Greenhouse, Lever and SmartRecruiters becomes a paid monthly subscription; he also pledged 10% of income to charities including Code.org, Wikimedia, EFF and a local Polish foundation. On 2017-01-27 he posted a second Show HN relaunching whoishiring.io as a product, drawing 419 points and 76 comments; the thread recorded Google Maps API limits under the traffic spike and parsing bugs such as jobs landing in the Oregon town of Remote.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Whoishiring.io is a web service that puts tech jobs on a map. Sebastian (xando) started it around August 2015 as a side project to see where jobs actually are, scraping Hacker News' monthly 'Who is Hiring' thread onto a map using a map-search tool he already had. The first Show HN was very well received and eventually ranked number 42 on HN's all-time top Show HN list.
Over the next year and a half the project grew from one HN thread to about 22 sources and 15,000 jobs, and Sebastian decided to turn it into a business. His announced model kept the audience side free — HN postings import free, internships post free, search stays free — while recruiters paid for direct postings and for a planned monthly ATS synchronisation subscription with systems such as Greenhouse, Lever and SmartRecruiters. He also pledged 10% of income to charities such as Code.org, Wikimedia and EFF.
On 2017-01-27 he posted a second Show HN relaunching the product, which drew 419 points and 76 comments on Hacker News. Commenters confirmed real use (one called it his primary job-search tool) and reported teething problems — Google Maps API limits under the traffic spike, slow clustering, and listings mis-parsed into places like Remote, Oregon. The source thread ends at the relaunch, so no later funding, revenue or shutdown milestone is recorded here.
What has to be true
- Hacker News' 'Who is Hiring' thread already held thousands of free, structured job offers; a map layer added the geography the thread lacked.
- Splitting free for job seekers from paid for recruiters priced the two sides of the market separately and made the free tool the growth engine.
- Quietly aggregating 22 sources over 1.5 years turned a single-thread scraper into a real search product before any marketing spend.
- A second Show HN after years of iteration converted accumulated goodwill into an instant product-launch audience.
What can be applied
Keep the free channel that earned the audience — HN imports and map search — and charge only for what saves recruiters work: direct posting and ATS synchronisation.
Aftermath
As of 2017-01-27 whoishiring.io was live with about 15,000 jobs from 22 sources, free for job seekers, with recruiters charged for direct postings and a paid monthly ATS-synchronisation subscription planned; the founder had pledged 10% of income to charities including Code.org, Wikimedia and EFF. The thread records immediate fixes after the traffic spike — Google Maps API limits and parsing issues such as the Oregon town of Remote — but no later funding, revenue or shutdown milestones appear in the source, so this entry stops at the relaunch.
Sources
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