How Career Hound grows

Finds most creators by scrolling and DMing people already making content just for fun: 'Hey, do you want to do some paid content work?' (marketplaces are the easier alternative). Pays no more than ~$20 per video in ~90% of cases. Keeps costs low by making it zero-research: creators open a sheet of formats with exact instructions; each brief is checked for 'any room for confusion or is it stupid simple?' Communicates with creators on WhatsApp; tracks views with Shortimize.

Co-founder found his own job by building a scraper for jobs posted directly on company websites; they productized that process into a job board for US job seekers, with a modest $1,000-each goal.

No free plan. Plans: $7/week, $20/month, $50/year. Annual plans make monthly revenue ($28K) run well ahead of MRR ($12K).

Winning timeless format for a job board: hook that calls out people wanting jobs hiring remotely and worldwide, then a list of companies offering that, and at the end 'to find more jobs like this, go on Roman's website.' Because the desire never changes, the same list format can be run again and again, escaping the trend-chasing 'hamster wheel' of UGC.

'Content thrifting': spend hours scrolling and watching video and text content in the niche on Instagram, Reddit and TikTok, saving anything that grabs attention. Look for consistent patterns that reveal timeless topics (always relevant) rather than timely trends (dead within a week), since building distribution on trends means constantly chasing them.

For a job search product, picks older creators (grey hair, wrinkles) because audiences subconsciously link them with wisdom and credibility; a 19-year-old giving job advice isn't believable. Many are in their 50s and have never made content before, made possible by very simple instructions.

Runs many marketing experiments daily, aiming to fail fast to eliminate what doesn't work, and extracts insights from every failure. Uses PostHog for marketing experiments and Microsoft Clarity to watch website visitors.