Ask HN: Want feedback on LinkedIn alternative

I submitted this 2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31736853 (Do people want a LinkedIn alternative?) and tallied up everyone's opinion (both negative and positive).

Here's a breakdown of what people said:

Want - Count

  No social media - 13
  Keep in touch with old colleagues - 7
  No recruiter spam - 6
  Find new job - 5
  Pressure to grow with leads to social media - 5
  Passive network - 5
  Focus on skill, not resume - 4
  No random contacts / connections - 4
  Public profile page - 4
  Use email - 3
  Find candidates (search companies) - 2
  No approach from recruiter if not looking for a job -2
  Community - 1

I developed 4 personas based on this survey.

  The cynic
  1) Dislike social media
  2) Need for growth and monetization will ruin your product
  3) LinkedIn does it's job and let's leave it at that

  The networker
  1) Want to keep in contact with old colleagues
  2) Dislike recruiter spam
  3) Dislike social media
  4) Use only email

  The job hunter
  1) Want to find new job
  2) Want recruiters to propose new jobs to them
  3) Want to focus on skill rather than resume
  4) Use LinkedIn as a passive static page

  The recruiter/ hiring manager
  1) Search companies for candidates
  2) Skills validation

The networkers seems unhappy with LinkedIn. The job hunters and recruiters are willing to deal with tons of spam for the chance of finding their next opportunity or the right candidate. Everyone seems to agree that social media is the worst part of LinkedIn and is a net negative to the user experience. So much so that many users do not login for months on end other than occasionally updating their resume or checking inMail.

Taking the breakdown of what people said, I want to propose an alternative version that focuses more on the social capital aspect of professional networking. We are primarily targeting the networker persona that do not feel LinkedIn fulfills their needs. Such as meeting other professionals in the industry, understanding the local industry landscape, and asking for advice for professional challenges.

Our platform will be a professional directory based on location and industry. Users will need a work email to register to validate their company. In order to add someone to their connections, they need to know the specific person’s work email. This can help users stay in touch with one another after they leave their current role. There is no global candidate search by name to cut the number of random connection requests.

Add your LinkedIn link (or any personal homepage) to your profile if you want to redirect users to your resume. We believe this is best for our users that want a single source of truth for their experience.

There will be NO social media. You don’t want to read about other people’s personal update.

The platform does one thing only: connecting industry professionals that have legitimate reason to with one another. We aren’t looking to replace LinkedIn. We want to focus more on that parts that LinkedIn doesn’t do well at.

Is this something you are willing to try out? We are looking for feedback/ validation and early beta users. If you could, would you mind dropping your email in this form:

https://forms.gle/abw59j8FZBXKJRNa7

Let me know if you have any questions.