Data as a GTM Weapon: How TalentHub Uses Analytics to Drive Category Awareness

When TalentHub discovered that an enterprise customer had 10,000 applicants for just 100 positions, they saw more than just a statistic – they saw an opportunity to reshape how companies think about recruitment. Instead of pitching a solution, they let the numbers tell the story.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, TalentHub CEO Daniel Birkholm revealed how they’ve turned data into their most powerful go-to-market weapon, offering valuable lessons for founders looking to create new market categories.

Using Data to Expose Hidden Problems

TalentHub’s data-driven approach began with a simple observation. As Daniel recalls, they discovered that enterprises were “really not in the business of recruiting. We are in the business of rejecting because we are rejecting a lot more people than we recruit.” This insight led to a crucial question: “What are you doing with the remaining 9900 and what do they feel about your company after that?”

Rather than immediately pushing a solution, TalentHub used this data point to help enterprises discover a problem they didn’t know they had. The sheer scale of rejections – 99% of applicants in some cases – became a compelling argument for measuring and optimizing candidate experience.

Data as a Category Creation Tool

TalentHub’s approach to establishing their category started with generating awareness through data. “Before, talent companies didn’t have any insights into this, meaning that they did not understand that they potentially had a problem and that data can bring awareness and that awareness very often also create innovation,” Daniel explains.

This strategy accomplished two critical goals. First, it helped quantify an invisible problem that enterprises weren’t tracking. Second, it created natural pathways for product expansion by revealing additional challenges as companies began measuring their candidate experience.

From Data to Market Education

Instead of trying to convince enterprises they needed another recruitment tool, TalentHub positioned themselves as helping “companies all over the world to measure and improve their hiring experience.” This data-first approach resonated particularly well with “bigger companies with several recruiters hiring manager driven approach to recruitment, where you have a centralized talent acquisition team that are responsible for the recruitment process, but where the execution can be in several departments, several countries.”

The complexity of enterprise recruitment actually worked in their favor – more complexity meant more data points to measure and optimize, making the value proposition increasingly compelling as organization size grew.

Using Data to Drive Product Evolution

TalentHub’s data strategy didn’t stop at market education. As Daniel shares, they’ve used data insights to expand their product offering, including creating “a telehub candidate learning center making it possible for companies to prepare candidates better, set them better up for success during a hiring process.”

This evolution was driven by the data they were collecting about candidate experience, creating a virtuous cycle where data insights led to product innovations, which in turn generated more valuable data.

The Impact of Data-Driven Category Creation

The results speak for themselves. TalentHub has grown from a simple idea to a platform used across 160 countries, approaching $2 million in annual recurring revenue. “We more or less tripled our growth the first year. The past year here we have doubled it,” Daniel notes.

Key Lessons for B2B Founders

TalentHub’s experience offers several crucial insights about using data for category creation:

1. Use data to help customers discover problems they don’t know they have
2. Let numbers tell the story instead of pushing solutions
3. Use initial data insights to drive product evolution
4. Focus on metrics that reveal fundamental market shifts
5. Use data to create natural expansion opportunities

For B2B founders looking to create new categories, data can be your most powerful ally. The key is not just collecting data, but using it strategically to help enterprises discover, quantify, and solve problems they didn’t know they had. As TalentHub’s journey shows, when you let the numbers tell the story, you don’t have to work as hard to convince customers they need your solution – the data does that work for you.