Beyond Features: How Humanly Built Their Go-to-Market Strategy Around Impact Metrics

Most B2B tech companies build their go-to-market strategy around features, benefits, and traditional growth metrics. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Humanly founder Prem Kumar revealed how focusing on impact metrics has shaped their entire approach to market penetration and growth.

From Personal Experience to Measurable Impact

The seeds of Humanly’s impact-focused strategy were planted during Prem’s own job search experience at the University of Washington. “We’d compare notes from the interviews and we’d be interviewing with the exact same companies for the exact same job, with the exact same interview panel,” he recalls, noting the stark differences in how he and his female classmate were treated.

This observation evolved into a core belief: hiring teams aren’t inherently biased, but they lack the right tools. “Hiring teams aren’t innately biased. They’re not bad, they just don’t have the tech to really engage with candidates at scale in these high volume scenarios.”

Quantifying Candidate Experience

Rather than just tracking traditional metrics like user growth or revenue, Humanly built their entire product around measuring and improving candidate experience. The results have been striking: “We’ve passed a million candidates that we’ve engaged with and the average rating they have of the experience is about 4.8 out of five.”

What’s particularly noteworthy is that this positive experience extends beyond successful candidates. “Even the candidates that didn’t get the job rated it very strongly, which was a surprise,” Prem notes.

Converting Impact into Growth

This focus on impact metrics has proven to be a powerful growth driver. As Prem explains: “With the 100,000 candidate conversations, one thing that I’m really proud of is, can we turn that to a million a month? I’m basically saying there’s now a million screening conversations that might have been done in an unstructured way… but now all of those million per month are happening in a more structured, less biased and more efficient way.”

Selling to Investors with Dual Metrics

Unlike many startups that focus solely on traditional growth metrics, Humanly explicitly includes impact metrics in their investor discussions. “These are numbers we share with our investors, the impact metrics as well, not just the financial ones,” Prem emphasizes.

This dual-metric approach has helped them tell a more compelling story about their market opportunity. Instead of just talking about market size, they can demonstrate how improving candidate experience drives business value.

Building a Data-Driven Foundation

The company’s ability to measure and demonstrate impact stems from their fundamental approach to product development. “I consider ourselves and I wouldn’t say we’re not the only one in the world doing this, but we’re definitely consider ourselves a data company,” Prem explains. “We’re using data to help solve problems in the recruiting conversation space.”

Future Growth Through Impact

Looking ahead, Humanly sees their impact metrics as key to market expansion. Their vision isn’t just about growing bigger – it’s about fundamentally transforming how companies engage with candidates. As Prem puts it, “Any company that is hiring for high volume roles, we want to be the engine that’s helping them have more efficient and equitable direct conversations with their job candidates.”

For B2B tech founders, Humanly’s approach offers valuable lessons about building differentiation through impact metrics. By quantifying and tracking the right impact metrics alongside traditional growth metrics, companies can build stronger value propositions for both customers and investors while staying true to their mission.