Resumesimo.com is a Prague, Czech republic-based start up that offers a free service helping users create a professional resume quickly and easily. The company, which was founded in 2010 by Ladislav Nosakovec (22) and Martin Demiger (20), recently raised $500k (read here).
Martin accepted to speak with us to answer some questions about the company, the funding and future plans. Read the interview below.
FinSMEs: Hello Martin. Tell us something about Resumesimo.com. How did you come up with the idea of creating it?
Martin: “We came up with the idea of this project at the instigation of our friends who were complaining about not being able to find a job despite having distributed their CVs in a “bombing-like” response to perhaps hundreds of advertisements. We started thinking about how one can make himself different as early as when sending his CV in order for the personnel professionals to pay more attention to him than the usual few seconds.
The main strength of Resumesimo is its simplicity. We are aware of the tens of competitors who offer very similar services. But we try to do things differently – we were optimizing the whole process of creating a CV in order to make it as simple as possible. We are also the only ones offering the CV before payment. You can try whether our services suit you and you pay only if they do. Everyone else does it the other way round and wants a payment from you at the very beginning. So you are buying a pig in a poke and you don’t have a clue what you are to pay for.
We started working on the first version of the project at the end of 2010 but we actually never activated it. Only this spring, we got an impulse from Jan Barta who had found the idea of the online CV creation interesting. In the end he also joined the project as an investor. We started off the new version of Resumesimo at the end of June“.
FinSMEs: What is it? How does it work?
Martin: “Resumesimo is an online application for creation of CVs. You visit us, select the template for your CV, fill in the necessary data and we will deliver you your CV in a splendid PDF which you can send to the employer. You can choose from 20 different templates which you can change free of charge any time. The whole service is totally for free and the client will also get a standard black-and-white CV, an e-book “How to find a job”, an online business card and all future adjustments for free“.
FinSMEs: Could you introduce us the other members of the team?
Martin: “Ladislav Nosakovec is behind the project apart from myself. We also have two full-time programmers engaged in the project and other approx. five people as outside workers“.
FinSMEs: Why did you start thinking about seed capital?
Martin: “These days, it is extremely difficult to break through without the initial capital. We experienced it ourselves with our several previous projects. It’s not a problem to develop any product but it is a great problem to push it through. Still it is not true that success depends only on money. When we were looking for a suitable investor, we were considering in particular the benefits which the new person joining our firm could bring, in addition to the money“.
FinSMEs: Today, many tech companies try to raise venture capital and I know that this is no easy. What did you do to reach this target? Was it easy to close the deal?
Martin: “Our situation was a bit different. We had started working on the project and wanted to start it off on a small scale, without any investments. But we had been cooperating with Jan on several other projects and he convinced us that if we wanted a truly global project and not just “one of a number of start-ups which failed to break through”, a great investment was necessary to start off. With the benefit of hindsight, we are glad we did agree with the investment. This is confirmed by other investment offers that we regularly receive. It is clear that Resumesimo is interesting for investors.
The investment itself was agreed at a few meetings, in fact we reached an agreement on the amount which we would get and how we would use it in one month. Fortunately we all had a very similar vision of how Resumesimo should look like“.
FinSMEs: Do you already plan to raise a “Series A venture capital funding round”?
Martin: “We are definitely open to anything, we are not against raising additional money from investors. Within the development phase, we have achieved approximately a tenth of what we would actually like to have“.
FinSMEs: Given this experience, what would you say to other young or would-be entrepreneurs who are going through a similar process? Is venture capital the only solution?
Martin: “Seed capital is tricky and it is definitely necessary to have a look not just at “how much” but in particular at “from whom”. When we were looking for an investor, we acted just upon this rule. In this respect, our investor is able to offer us more than anyone else. He has been regularly investing into internet projects and on top of that, he has been moving all of them into a single building in the centre of Prague so that there is synergy working among the individual projects and we help each other.
“I can’t imagine that we would cooperate with an investor only in terms of finances. Experiences and contacts are much more important for us than money. The venture capital is definitely not the only way how to raise money. Before you start looking for an investment, it’s good to consider all options and select the best one. If the costs of creation of the project basic version are not high why should you wait for an investment and not do it step by step at your own expense? If you believe in your project it should not be a problem for you to invest your own money into it“.
FinSMEs: Could you give them some quick advices on how to approach potential investors?
Martin: “Before you start looking for money, it’s good to have the project well planned and at least partially tested and functioning. The more you can present, the greater is your chance of getting an investment. It applies in the same time that with functioning and at least partially running projects, your negotiating position is better. You can not only ask for more money but also for a larger share in the firm“.
FinSMEs
26/09/2011