Job Hunt, Not Job Search
Pick one target employer, do unpaid work for them before you apply, and arrive already pre-selected.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
Shaan applied to exactly two jobs when he moved to Silicon Valley in early 2012: Stripe and a near-unknown startup studio called Monkey Inferno. At Stripe he ran the conventional play, got the strongest possible warm introduction, walked into a 'sell me this software' role-play, picked Basecamp by 37signals because he thought it sounded impressive, admitted nothing, and blew it. At Monkey Inferno he did the opposite. He built a website resume arguing why he was the guy for the job, then started emailing Michael Birch unsolicited product critiques of Birch's live products, flow by flow. By the time he flew in from Australia and rang the doorbell, Birch had already decided; the interview was 'Tell me your story' and the job was his. Six months later Birch handed him the whole studio to run. Shaan's own framing is the whole method: a search surveys the field, a hunt picks one animal and stalks it.
Origin
Shaan formulated it after contrasting his failed Stripe interview with his effortless Monkey Inferno interview in 2012, and Sam Parr immediately recognised it as the same thing he had done.
Core principles
- 01A search compares you; a hunt makes you the only candidate.
- 02Do the job before you have the job so there is nothing left to evaluate.
- 03Specific critique of their live product beats generic enthusiasm.
- 04Interview games test performance, not fit; make them unnecessary.
- 05Two targets you actually want beat fifty you would tolerate.
How to run it
- 1
Choose one target and commit
Pick the single company whose work you want to be doing, based on the person running it rather than the brand or the salary. Shaan chose Monkey Inferno because Michael Birch had already built what Shaan wanted to build.
Pro tip Bet on the person. Shaan applied to Stripe only because he had read Paul Graham essays and watched the founders' interviews and concluded the people would win.
- 2
Become a real user of their product
Use the live product until you have specific, defensible opinions about it. This is the step that makes everything after it credible, and skipping it is exactly what sank the Stripe interview.
Watch out Do not name a product you have not used. Shaan picked Basecamp because it sounded popular, then had nothing to say and could not walk it back.
- 3
Send unsolicited work before you apply
Email the decision-maker concrete improvements: 'I checked out the flow for this, I think it could be improved here and here and here.' Send more than once so it reads as sustained interest rather than a stunt.
Pro tip Critique a flow you can describe screen by screen, so it is obvious you actually clicked through it.
- 4
Build a purpose-made application artefact
Shaan built a website resume specifically arguing why he was the person for that one job, rather than a general-purpose CV sent everywhere.
Pro tip Because you only have one target, the artefact can be narrow enough to be genuinely persuasive.
- 5
Show up in person and just be normal
By this point the decision is largely made, so the meeting is a sanity check. Shaan flew straight from the airport, killed half an hour in a Burlington Coat Factory across the street with his suitcase, then rang the doorbell and told his story.
Watch out You can still lose here by being a weirdo. Birch's stated bar was that Shaan simply not blow it.
In the wild
Shaan built a website resume, then repeatedly emailed Michael Birch specific improvements to the flows of Monkey Inferno's live products. He then flew in from Australia and interviewed at the studio's converted seven-condo office in San Francisco.
→ The easiest, most relaxed interview of his life. Birch had already decided before he walked in, and six months later told him to run the studio, which led to Blab, the youth e-sports app and the Twitch acquisition.
Shaan applied to roughly 30-person Stripe in early 2012 with the strongest warm introduction available, a shared mentor who thought highly of him, but no product familiarity. Asked to sell a piece of software of his choosing, he picked Basecamp, which he had never used, then fumbled the live role-play.
→ He did not get the job. Doing the maths later, he estimated a biz dev seat at that stage of Stripe would have been worth roughly ten to twenty million dollars.
Common mistakes
Naming something impressive instead of something you know
Shaan reached for what he thought other people admired rather than what he actually used, then found himself 'pot committed' and unable to admit the bluff without looking worse. Answer from your own real usage or you have nothing to draw on when they push.
Relying on the warm introduction to carry you
Shaan had the strongest possible referral into Stripe, a mentor shared with the interviewer, and still lost. A referral gets you the meeting; it does not survive contact with an unprepared performance. The hunt replaces the referral with evidence of work.
Hedging across many applications
Spreading effort across a list means no single application gets the unpaid product work that makes the hunt work. Shaan applied to two companies total, and the one he actually hunted is the one that hired him.
Is it for you?
Best for
Operators with no credential edge who want a specific job at a specific small company where the decision-maker is reachable.
Not ideal for
People applying into large HR-gated pipelines, or anyone who needs volume of offers rather than one particular seat.
From the transcript
“I didn't do a job search. I did a job hunt. I was like, this is the job I want. I'm going to zone in…”
“I started sending them like ideas for their current products. I was like, hey, I checked out the flow for this. I think it could…”
“Basically by the time I got there, he was already interested as long as I wasn't a weirdo.”
From the episode
Shaan's Story: How I Made My First $1,000,000 By Age 31
Shaan's Story