
Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach - neat0-ninj4
https://www.getboost.io/
======
rezashirazian
_Roll eyes_. I'm sorry but this is a ridiculous idea. I can see potential use
for this once or twice a year, and even at that I wouldn't reach out to anyone
unless I know them personally.

How insecure and in need of validation someone needs to be to seek career
advice from a chatbot four times a month?

~~~
ztratar
Hey! Founder & CEO here.

Love the emotional response. Hey -- some people have to think it's incredibly
stupid for it to be a good idea, right? #vclogic ;)

Anyways, we don't see this as just an advisor/coach that you use once or twice
a year. That's thinking by the old school rules of how career coaches work.

But Boost is very, very different.

The vast majority of our users use Boost to analyze internal workplace
situations, such as those dealing with politics or trying to climb the ladder.
Many users do this weekly, when they get new communications that confuse them
and they want to ensure they put their best foot forward.

We started the company as an advice-giving system for those during job hunts,
but found nearly everyone should have been talking to us 3-6 months before
they were switching. Most people don't have online brands that exude quality,
they don't land speaking engagements, they don't push themselves to hit goals,
and much more.

The people who push, have constant feedback, and have social accountability
end up achieving much more. They gain an edge over the people who only "need
advice once or twice a year."

Tighter feedback loops = faster learning, which equates to faster career
growth.

\----

Oh, and it's not a chatbot. Think of it more like Facebook M -- we have a
full-time staff of career coaches who ensure every conversation is of the
absolute quality. As of right now our chatbot tech is exceedingly limited and
we're prioritizing quality over scale.

~~~
ironic_ali
This was years ago now, but I said the same thing about that
"milliondollarwebsite.com" (or something like that?), that sold pixels as
advertising space on a single pahe. "What a bloody stupid idea" I said, and
said to my flat mates at the time, that if it makes the money I'll run round
the block naked.

Fast forward a year or so later, I got sent a link (by my now old flatmate) to
a BBC article saying they'd made their million bucks. So, we got together,
drank -a lot in my case - and all I remember is much hilarity and that it was
a cold night that night.

~~~
backpropaganda
The milliondollarwebsite idea was a much more stupid idea than OP. In fact, OP
should probably add more stupidity, to increase success probability. I'm only
half-kidding.

~~~
ztratar
Only half-kidding you say?!

:) - legit curious what you mean by that.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
add stupidity: anonymize user data, and crowdsource career advice. use text
analysis to figure out how career advice close to official Boost advice to
build up a network of advisors ranked from conventional to unconventional.
Users feedback on performance of idea, this allows you to identify users who
are likely to be helped by unconventional career advice. If you have data on
users employers over time you identify unconventional employers or perhaps
toxic workplaces. Add higher paid tier for users to see employer ratings.

After this point the stupidity will dissolve into blah blah blah.

------
fecak
I also provide private career advisory/coaching and resume services to many in
the tech sector, and I'm a mod on a Reddit sub that answers compsci career
questions (r/cscareerquestions), so this caught my eye.

The biggest question I generally have with services like this is "who is
providing the advice?". We have an issue in our Reddit sub, where there is
little transparency (obviously due to anonymous accounts) as to whether your
career advice is coming from someone with twenty years of industry experience
or an intern. I think the source of the info is relevant, as the recipient may
want to weigh the advice based on the source's experience.

It appears Boost is using some AI that might automate some of the response,
which will hopefully provide some good answers and perhaps have a few kinks
with advice that doesn't quite apply.

As a bit of advice for the founder (saw you commenting here), perhaps a bit of
info on the source of the advice would be useful to users.

Best of luck with the service, and feel free to reach out.

~~~
ztratar
Hey Fecak! Fantastic -- and important -- question.

We have trained career coaches on staff, an advisory board for coaching, and
an extensive network of experts who are within reach.

Through all of this, each conversation acts as a knowledge base that we can
pre-fill. We brought in tens of industry experts across product management,
design, software engineering, marketing, and more to give crash courses, which
were then put into the database as well.

We're still refining our coaching process, as what works for one individual
doesn't always work for another.

I'd be interested in chatting in more detail. Can you reach out? :) ->
zach@getboost.io

~~~
fecak
That's refreshing to hear that you've got some experienced team members in
place or on call, and although career advice is clearly not 'one-size-fits-
all' I've learned over the years that there are certainly many pieces of
advice that can be applied on a regular basis without much need for
customization (negotiation tactics perhaps) which is why AI will be quite
useful to you.

Happy to discuss with you, will email directly. Again, good luck!

------
tIONTamINariciA
In the "Communicate Better" section, did the imaginary employee really attach
business confidential information in a Boost topic?

i.e. "I've attached a PowerPoint full of sensitive information that I'd love
you to read and profide feedback. Soon afterwards I'll be needing job search
advice since my employer will fire me for having such terrible judgement."

Sounds like a terrible idea and a poor example of how to use the service. Do
they really want to advertise Boost as a service which will provide unapproved
consultancy of confidential info?

~~~
ztratar
Boost is 100% confidential. People talk about complex power grabs and
political situations all the time. For Boost to work well, people need to be
able to trust it with Information thy want confidential.

~~~
posixplz
> 100% confidential

Are your coaches licensed professional counselors, therapists or
psychologists? If not, those conversations are not actually privileged; any
disclosure of legally protected information (like a company's sensitive
internal documents) would be highly improper.

~~~
ztratar
We're thinking about putting in an NDA-like process that's more formal. People
should feel secure that we have their back.

Interestingly enough, "licensed career coaching" is a complete sham. There's
no real accreditation or regulatory environment: the largest career coaching
programs that bestow certificates are private, for-profit orgs and give out
their certs like candy on halloween. It's really sad.

I agree that there's a large amount of information that probably shouldn't be
sent to us, but people also need to give us the full context for their
personal problem. We don't encourage people to send us information we don't
need, and often they can get by with indirect info... "we're raising $8.6m on
a $100m valuation" -> "I think we're going through additional funding soon."

~~~
posixplz
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensed_professional_counselo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensed_professional_counselor)

It's not called a 'licensed career coach' \-- privilege, in this case, is a
legal protection that is not afforded to the type of relationships you're
talking about. You're putting yourself, and your clients, in a very legally
tenuous position.

------
scdoshi
This might be just me, but the most important thing to me when I get advice
is:

\- who am I getting it from

\- what do I know about their life/experience

\- under what circumstances

Because that let's me adjust how much importance to put on it. Getting advice
is generally not the hard part, figuring out which advice to follow and which
to discard is.

~~~
ztratar
Totally agree.

We help people build external social support networks as well.

In addition, as is true with all good coaches, most conversations circle
around introspection and talking through analysis rather than imposing our own
advice. We still give plenty of advice, but we also are aware enough of the
nuances that exist and we-don't-know-what-we-don't-know.

------
ktta
@dang: Are influenced submissions investigated? This post was submitted by an
account with no other submissions/comments except this. I suspect some
mischief, but have no proof. Is is possible to look at the first few votes
made for this post?

~~~
lorenzhs
The submission link has UTMs:
[https://www.getboost.io/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=so...](https://www.getboost.io/?utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=launch)

This certainly smells.

~~~
ktta
That was something that tipped me off too. They're very specific.

~~~
ztratar
It was posted by our head of coaching.

Suspicious? People self post all the time. We didn't run an upvote group, if
that's your concern. HN algorithms are way too impressive.

~~~
ktta
I guess we'll have to take your word for it.

The account that posted was created about two months ago and this was the only
submission which was the red flag. And this was the very first submission.
Usually people have to repeatedly post to get the traction this post did
because they get ignored sometimes.

~~~
ztratar
So what's weird is she actually posted last week too, but only she can see
that submission in her submissions page.

I can't see it -- I only see this one.

Maybe that's why this one was allowed to go up? Not sure.

------
dtft
Really cool idea, but I don't know why I would pay a (relatively large)
monthly fee for a service that I probably need twice a year, around both my
performance reviews.

~~~
ztratar
Hey dtft!

Boost can do things that help you daily or weekly such as:

\- Review communications (inbound and outbound) \- Help you develop new skills
and stay up to date \- Assist you with targeted networking \- And much more.

Overall, this is a service that can refine every aspect of your professional
life. People who only think about refining their habits and practices twice a
year are not aiming towards their potential. The bare minimum is too often
accepted as normal -- we want to change that.

------
anindha
As someone that moved to SF from Sydney and didn't have a strong network here
I think this would have helped.

One thing is that I have no idea who is on the other side of the chat. If they
are giving me advice about one of the most important things in my life is
there a guarantee on the quality of that advice?

Are you guys in the next YC batch?

~~~
ztratar
Quality can been self-assessed quite readily, and for tricky situations we
usually coach people to develop a supporting network outside of Boost. So far
we have paying users who are VPs at large companies all the way to College
Students.

And our tech revolves around surfacing quality advice, what works/doesn't
work, so it will constantly improve. Still, we don't risk anything -- we do
extensive training for coaches.

------
leroy_masochist
Quick question, trying to get my head around the product:

Say I just got an email from my boss that I think is passive-aggressively
accusatory (e.g., perhaps it lays out the specifics of what she wants me to do
tomorrow in a way that I think she's implying that I can't be entrusted to get
things done without detailed instructions).

I paste the email into Boost, asking for feedback; am I crazy, or is this an
accusatory email, I wonder, eagerly anticipating Boost's response. Perhaps I
also want to hear Boost's advice on how to respond to the email.

After I do this, who is reading and interpreting the email on Boost's behalf,
then giving me advice on how to respond? I'm sure you're feeding it into a
sentiment analysis API, but apart from that, what human attention does the
email get and what are the backgrounds of the humans doing it?

~~~
ztratar
The humans are trained career coaches who are on our full-time staff. They are
obliged to follow all privacy and confidentiality agreements that the company
follows itself.

------
dboreham
And I came here thinking this was about a C++ class library..

------
seem_2211
Cool idea. I like it overall.

I don't know about the idea of having "experts" talk to you. I've spent a lot
of time thinking about my career and talked to a few experts and it's a real
mixed bag. In some ways I see this in the same way I see most formal mentoring
programs - the best way to get an amazing mentor is to arrange it yourself.
There's a way to do it, but it's hard.

That said, there's a massive amount of potential to change the way that
recruiting is done. Traditional job boards suck - they don't work for
candidates - it's a blind stab in the dark, they don't work for hiring
managers because you get the same 100 applicants who didn't read the job
description every time you post up an ad.

Getting people to front-load the work before they look for jobs and making
that introductions to companies would totally change the game. Recruiters
aren't suited for that (I am a sales recruiter). You'd eat LinkedIn's job
postings for dinner as well.

If you were able to get a userbase of high-quality candidates, who you worked
with to improve their careers and then put them into additional jobs you'd be
able to charge thousands for each successful hire. There's a market for
helping move the smart, overworked, underpaid millennials who are grinding it
out at professional services firms from their first jobs at $50k to jobs
paying $120k a year (which will more or less happen naturally for a lot of
them as they move through their 20s). These people are likely to pay for it,
plus their employers would pay on the other end.

The hardest bit is making it a habit for young professionals to check into
your platform. Right now it's a weird concept, but hey, the idea of dating
online amongst 22 year olds was weird until Tinder changed the entire game.

If you could turn Boost into a career coach firstly and then into a reliable
pipeline of candidates for professional firms, I'm convinced you could make
this massive.

Damn, I want to work on this now haha.

~~~
ztratar
Hey! Message me -> zach@getboost.io

We actually played that game before. We were arbitraging candidates for their
job hunt -- taking a % of their salary upon successful new job. The issue was,
most frequently, was that you'd have to invest a lot of time/money into people
and there are a lot more "talkers" than "doers". So far, the recurring revenue
model has been a lot more psychologically pleasing, haha...

But yes -- our goal is to really help people become better and move up the
career ladder faster. If you're passionate about that, I do think we should
chat!

------
firloop
Reminds me a lot of StrongIntro's (YC W16) website

[https://strongintro.com/](https://strongintro.com/)

~~~
ztratar
Hey! We are friends with Fouad (founder of StrongIntro) and he let us use the
images. :)

~~~
gailees
Fouad is awesome. Always so helpful to everyone around him.

~~~
ztratar
True that!

------
ztratar
One thing I want to mention is our upcoming event! We'll be hosting Amjad
Masad, Founder of Repl.it and former JS Tech Lead at Facebook where they built
projects like React Native, BabelJS, and Jest.

Tickets are free. Event is in SF on June 1st!

[https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-fireside-chat-with-amjad-
masa...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-fireside-chat-with-amjad-masad-
founder-ceo-of-replit-tickets-34638891858?aff=hackernews)

------
beager
Thanks for sharing. Some notes:

1\. Signups go right to waitlist, so it's hard to validate any of this. Is
this vaporware? Why waitlist? Are you still in dev, or is this an artificial
scarcity play?

2\. All I see here conceptually is headhunter lead-gen, so I don't understand
why you're charging $708+/yr for chatting. Why not offer your service for
free, register orders of magnitude more users, and make your money as an
agency by placing users in new jobs? If they are engaged with your platform,
you'll know it's time to do that before any other platform or agency does, and
you have a qualitative advantage over other agencies because you will have
counseled your candidates for a long time prior. Seems like the focus of
Jobstart before you rebranded it, n'est pas?

3\. Your job functions in registration are constrained to tech and tech-
adjacent functions only. Is that a limitation of the advisors you have on your
platform, an unconsciously narrow scope, or is it related to your market
designs for point 2?

4\. How will you not get obliterated in court for encouraging the transmission
of proprietary or privileged information?

5\. Back to the $708+/yr point, so many alternatives could provide the same
use for less. A private curated Quora, a user mentor network with perks
(advise other users for incentives), even curated career resources in a
newsletter or Amazon book-of-the-month club. I realize that a service like
this might pay for itself in boosting one's earning potential, but many less-
expensive incarnations of the same are at anyone's disposal.

6\. Why chat? Why not email? Why not Hangouts? I feel like chat is such a
restrictive medium.

~~~
dimaggiosghost
Disclaimer, I have gotten much value out of their previous project, jobstart.

1/ it's based on personal advice so needs to scale on both sides. I've spoken
w the founders and they legit.

2/ I intend to get my work to pay for it under "high quality outsourced good
management". I don't expect to use it for a new job, but to perform better in
my current.

3/ it is my understanding that it's a scaling thing.

5/ in my job, a 10% improvement in efficiency Uncompounded is worth thousands
of dollars in direct costs per month. Well worth it, based on my jobstart
experience w the same team.

~~~
beager
With respect to #2, why would any employer pay for their employee to use a
service that has a strong financial incentive to place them in a new job?

~~~
bcjordan
If the service ($) actually develops an employee to a higher level of
performance, the employer gets the benefit of a more senior hire who is
already at their company instead of having to recruit ($$) and on-board ($$)
one & hope they work out ($$$).

Even if they need to give the current employee a healthy raise ($$) to retain
them, they'd still probably net save money.

(in theory)

If some high % of employees who use this tool discover they really ought to be
working elsewhere, well, that's probably better for the industry's
cost/productivity as a whole, so everyone wins in the end yayy!! But sure
maybe it's optimal for an employer to hide this sort of tool if they rely on
employees having inefficient market information to retain them & that somehow
fits with their ethics...

(Looking at you, the giant companies that got sued for their illegal informal
non-competes...)

------
tsunamifury
Have they thought about adding in Motivational Coaching? I would easily pay
for that as I need to perform at a very high level for long periods of time
with little advice. I would pay probably upwards of 300 a month for regular
access to a motivational and strategic coach a la the main character in
Showtime's Billions.

~~~
ztratar
Boost does motivational coaching as well! We brought in some CBTs (Cognitive
Behavioral Therapist) who recommended we train our coaches in it.

I can't guarantee it'll be as high quality as the Billion's actors though. ;)

------
gt_
I am usually very skeptical, esspecially when it comes to the pitfalls of
exchanging personal advice, but this really is not personal advice. This is
ethics training.

I think the difference changes Everything. This could solve a very real
problem: the mysteries of navigating ethical standing.

I am concerned about the anonymity, particularly that the advice depends on
the info provided while the user is representing not only themselves as a
patient but also their ego. Ideally, the user would have comfortable assurance
of their anonymity and the concept would have a unique value. If doable and
manageable, I would believe in that.

Privacy would be a concern for many users (for various reasons) but not all.
My thought about anonymity is about usefulness, not privacy.

------
fdsfsafasfdas
Hah—ironically, it's expensive enough it should be advising you to go with a
cheaper option.

------
mifreewil
I didn't look very deep beyond the main graphic at the top, basically did a
quick 5 second test on it. Personally, even though I'm a typical person who
avoids phone calls most of the time, I can't imagine texting some stranger for
career advice. Some sort of network tool to match with a mentor for a long-
term relationship sounds like something I might become interested in once in
the shit storm as a founder. Ideally, the match would lead to phone and/or in-
person conversations and advice.

------
gibbiv
UTMs in the HN link: cheese-a-rific

------
nul_byte
"Hi again Boost. So I've been working at my job now for about 8 months and
don't think I'm getting paid enough as a Lead Designer -- barely making rent
in SF isn't fun. Is it too early to ask for a raise?"

Would someone really want to confide that much of personal glimpse into their
working life to community they barely even know, or even for their current
employer or future employer to possibly see one day.

Not for me.

~~~
smelterdemon
I have similar concerns, although I'm shocked the quoted question is where
someone would draw the line. That in particular does not seem at all personal,
or potentially damaging at all (if an employer regards an employee trying to
gauge their value negatively they're probably a shitty company to work for
anyway). Personally I wonder how effective any kind of general career advice
could be without conferring with a level of intimacy I'd reserve for a
therapist or close friend. I feel like only the most practical career advice
(which is widely and freely available) could be offered up without delving
into things like long term goals and personal motivations. I guess I could see
this being useful if you have a well formed idea of where you want to go in
your career and have trouble getting from point A to point B, or could use a
little encouragement/social pressure, but I think the harder problem is
figuring out that destination not the implementation details.

~~~
ztratar
To both points: trust is earned over time and we have to actually design our
onboarding flows and coaching processes around that idea. It's tricky, but
it's how it should work -- we don't expect people to have implicit faith in
any system, and actively coach them to question the world around them.

More people question too little than too much, so it's great to see you all
are the opposite. :)

------
egonschiele
My first question on seeing this was "what does the advice look like?" Thanks
for having so many examples right on the home page!

------
peteretep
I'm a recruiter who's been a CTO, contract developer, consulted for most of
the large international staffing companies, run (very) occasional courses on
career development for developers, and have hired many people as a technical
interviewer. I give a lot of free advice to developers I represent.

I will be curious to see if there's an actual market for this.

~~~
pmiller2
Do you work in or around the Bay Area? I don't actually know very many
recruiters who are more than just salespeople.

~~~
peteretep
Afraid not. While I've technically got global reach, I focus on London, and a
particular niche in London.

~~~
joncrocks
Any tips for finding 'good' recruiters/filtering out bad ones?

And any tips for finding good recruiters in London specifically?

~~~
peteretep
What area are you in? Possible I can make recommendations albeit unlikely.
I've found a fairly strong correlation between recruiters whose company I
enjoy and their competence. Also: look at the spread of the jobs they're in,
do they sponsor conferences and communities?

------
cblock811
Sounds like this would be helpful for a lot of people. I would use it
following the same rationale as hiring a personal trainer: some self-imposed
level of accountability to push me forward. I know how to exercise, but having
someone there to nudge me in the right direction helps me actually do it.

~~~
ztratar
^^^^ someone gets it!

------
DictumMortuum
Good idea or not - I am worried about the security of this. Some of us have
signed contracts that specifically mention that we shouldn't share company
information with third parties.

Even if a person hasn't signed a non disclosure, how ethical is it to share
in-company politics with others?

~~~
ztratar
We are too -- that's why we are working close with our lawyer to understand
all the implications.

We're also working on DB security. Our data isn't large enough yet to really
be a big target -- it's pretty boring right now -- but we'll invest in it
right when scaling hits promising Series A-style levels.

------
thinbeige
How will you scale (if intended)?

Why I ask: Wondering if bots or customer support staff can really support this
use case.

~~~
ztratar
Hey there! We're looking to scale this in a similar way as Facebook M -- where
our coaches on staff have control over specific bots with specific purposes,
and can leverage an entire world of data/knowledge to quickly craft
personalized responses.

At $59/month, unit economics should work as we develop better tech. But for
now we're certainly prioritizing quality over speed. :)

~~~
deegles
Have you thought about freemium models? Maybe have bot-only engagements that
are free and then pay for more personalized advice? I just feel like paying on
a "session" basis would be more workable for me than a monthly subscription.
If the product/advice works well, I should have less and less need of it! :)

------
ktal90
I've watched Zach and his team evolve their business and product over the past
few months and years. I'm really impressed by their ability to adapt and build
new products guided by user feedback and data. I'm excited to see how many
people Boost will help!

------
satysin
What is your legal protection on giving bad advice? It's all good to say
something along the lines of it not being legal advice, etc. But what if some
advice you give wrecks that person career? How are you and your mentors
protected?

------
noufalibrahim
I'm not totally convinced but sufficiently intrigued to give this a go.

Are you focussing purely on low to mid level employees inside a company or
also catering to freelancers and such people who have similar though not
exactly the same needs?

~~~
ztratar
Hey! We have a wide variety of users and are trying to figure out if we want
to niche, but so far a lot of the success has been against broad markets.

Low/Mid level employees are certainly much easier to help. Less complicated
political situations, etc.

We have a couple freelancers on the platform... probably about 15 or so. Their
discussions usually center around improving their external brand and customer
pipelines.

------
sprice
This looks very useful. But it's not clear to me what a "topic" is. Is it a
single question from beginning to end? If it dragged on could it become a new
topic? More clarity with this would be great!

~~~
ztratar
Thanks for the feedback!

There's actually currently an AB test where we remove topics. It seems that
most people are confused by this, and it created a strange flow in the
conversations.

A topic is basically an entire chat engagement, end-to-end, with a specific
purpose.

As I said though, we're looking to gain data right now to possibly remove
them. Appreciate the thoughts!

~~~
ha470
Maybe just call them "conversations"?

------
gailees
How do you manage such an insanely low price point?

~~~
ztratar
I always love when this advice contrasts with "Why does it cost so much" :P

Our entire engineering team is dedicated to building tools that make our
career coaches super human. Unit economics can get healthy pretty fast.

------
pieroapretto
Cool idea! Very much needed in this industry.

------
bbcbasic
Would this be suitable for money-making side-project advice and goals?

------
shahbaby
Possibly useful for people who have lots of money and no friends.

~~~
ztratar
Hahahaha.

------
jv22222
Here's a similar service for dating advice:
[https://hermes.social](https://hermes.social)

Shows that this concept can span niches.

------
elfenheart
This is awesome!

~~~
ztratar
Hey Elfen! Founder here -- thank you. :)

We're always looking to hone in our pitch and improve the product. If you or
anyone else here has feedback, let me know.

~~~
Rmilb
Can we get a shift + Enter to submit the main chat text field?

~~~
ztratar
Shift+Enter is usually reserved to make a new line, wherease command or
ctrl+enter is used to submit.

Does that work for you?

~~~
Rmilb
Thank you!

