Success leaves clues. Finances Strategists sat down with Isaac Morehouse, founder of Crash. He shared his thoughts on the past, present, and future of the company, as well as the insight he gained from running the business. Q: Who are you and what’s your background? I grew up homeschooled in the Midwest, got a degree at age 19 from a generic state university, and realized quickly it was a waste of time and money and had nothing to do with career success. I spent a decade following the jobs that interested me most, which led me to work with a lot of college students on helping them start their careers at some different non-profits. I got the itch to build something myself in 2013, and started Praxis, a college alternative. We bootstrapped it to profitable growth. Five years and several hundred students in, I got the itch again. This time to take some of what we’d learned at Praxis and launch a platform for job seekers. Crash was born in 2018. Q: Who has been your biggest influence, and why did they have such a significant effect on you? My brother Levi Morehouse, who’s the founder and CEO of Ceterus. We grew up without a normal dad, so I looked to my older brother. When I was three, my father was in a car accident and suffered a head injury. He survived and lived at home with us, but can’t walk and has no short-term memory and required 24/7 care. My brother was entrepreneurial before I was, and I followed in his path in many ways – from flipping houses in the early 2000s to starting a company many years later. He also bootstrapped a service business before launching a venture-backed software company, so I ended up getting to learn a lot watching and talking with him. Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have told yourself when you were in your twenties? Think and act bigger and bolder sooner. I grew up around practical minded small business owners. They have great work ethic and are prudent. But there wasn’t a lot of big crazy bold thinking. I didn’t know it was possible to do what I’m doing now until very late in the game. I think I thought you had to be an “expert.” I learned over time that no one knows what they’re doing, so why not me? Q: What is Crash? Crash is a platform for job-seekers to show their skills and abilities with video and dynamic projects, and run their job hunt like a sales process, instead of blasting boring resumes and generic applications. Q: What makes your company different from its competitors? Our competitors are really the status quo. Dull jobs boards with lifeless applications and generic resumes and “dear sir or madam” cover letters. We’re not competing against other video pitch and job hunt dashboard tools, we’re competing against an old mindset. We’re competing against a “follow the rules, buy third-party credentials, list them on a resume, and wait” approach. Crash is a mindset wrapped in a product. We’re helping job-seekers to level up, be the aggressor, show their stuff, and win jobs they never thought possible. We are pioneers of the inevitable. Q: What led you to start Crash? Five years in the trenches running the Praxis bootcamp. After seeing hundreds of young people in Praxis with no degrees or experience win great jobs at great companies that said “degree and 2-3 years experience required,” I realized we could scale that little slice of the experience, the job-hunt. Praxis participants didn’t send resumes. They created tailored pitches and projects and hunted down companies and sent them stuff that couldn’t be ignored. I saw an opportunity to take that and turn it into a platform for millions of job seekers. When Mike Maples, a world-class investor from Floodgate, reached out to talk over the idea with me, I realized the time was right. Q: What has the experience of building the business taught you? That building a VC backed software startup is very different from building a bootstrapped service company! The biggest challenge has been constantly scoping down what we’re building so we can move fast. We’ve got this grand vision for everything we can do to help people discover and do what makes them come alive in their careers, but paring that back to the smallest part we can start with to gain traction is a big challenge. I’m a big crazy ideas guy – I want to change the world! – so starting small takes discipline I sometimes lack. Q: Where do you see things headed for you in the next 5 years? As for Crash, we firmly believe the future of matching talent with opportunity involves quality over quantity. Dynamic video profiles, project-based applications, and serious courting between serious seekers and companies, instead of mass-blast job postings and applications. We’re building that future. Personally, I’ve got four kids to raise, and my goal is to maximize the quality of my time with them while continuing to build. I will always be an entrepreneur and I don’t plan to stop building! About Crash Crash is for more than just job hunting. You’re breaking into an industry you’re excited about, by forming new connections to people who are even more passionate than you. Crash gives you the tools to make you stand out in even the most competitive job markets. Learn more at crash.co.Introduction
Who is Isaac Morehouse?
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True Tamplin is a published author, public speaker, CEO of UpDigital, and founder of Finance Strategists.
True is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance (CEPF®), author of The Handy Financial Ratios Guide, a member of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, contributes to his financial education site, Finance Strategists, and has spoken to various financial communities such as the CFA Institute, as well as university students like his Alma mater, Biola University, where he received a bachelor of science in business and data analytics.
To learn more about True, visit his personal website or view his author profiles on Amazon, Nasdaq and Forbes.
