Happenstance

What do they actually do

Happenstance is an AI people‑search tool that indexes the contacts in the accounts you connect (Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter) and lets you find specific people using plain‑English queries (e.g., “product managers at Series A fintechs”). You can try searches on the website without signing up to see example results immediately (homepage, YC profile).

It supports a web app for search, a Slack bot you can @mention in channels, and a Pro‑only email agent you can forward to for results via email. A Research beta generates concise profiles for meetings. The free tier covers core search after you connect accounts; Pro ($24/month billed annually) adds unlimited searches, unlimited results, CSV export, the email agent, and early access to features. Team/enterprise plans are also offered (homepage, pricing, research).

The company positions the product for sales, hiring, and fundraising use cases, and publicly claims it’s “Loved by 100,000+ users.” Happenstance is in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 batch (homepage, YC profile).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Recruiters and hiring managers: They need to find and vet candidates across scattered contact lists and social accounts; today they search LinkedIn, email, and spreadsheets one‑by‑one, which is slow and misses referrals (homepage, YC profile).
• Salespeople and business‑development reps: They depend on warm introductions but struggle to quickly see who in their network can open target accounts across Gmail/LinkedIn/Twitter, so outreach is often cold or delayed (homepage).
• Founders raising capital: They must map which investors are reachable via their network and get intros; doing this manually from email and social contacts is error‑prone and time‑consuming (homepage, YC profile).
• Connectors, advisors, and community managers: They make introductions regularly but lack a fast way to search across trusted peers’ networks and share curated contacts with permissions, leading to missed or late intros (pricing / team plans, founder post).
• Executives and meeting owners needing pre‑call context: They want concise attendee profiles and context but currently pull notes from multiple sources by hand, which slows prep and weakens conversations (research beta).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Founder‑led outreach to the YC network and early signups with white‑glove onboarding: personally help users connect accounts, run searches, and capture testimonials/referrals for adjacent recruiting/sales/founder circles (YC profile, homepage).
• First 50: Target recruiter, sales, and founder communities (Slack/LinkedIn groups, newsletters) with time‑boxed Pro access in exchange for measurable case studies; enable referral invites so early users can add teammates and clients into shared searches (pricing, integrations).
• First 100: Optimize the “try without signup” funnel to drive team trials, add simple self‑serve team signup and credits, and list in Slack/app directories; run co‑hosted webinars with recruiting/sales platforms to convert inbound trials to paid teams (homepage, integrations).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Adjacent software categories suggest a realistic software TAM on the order of $8–12B today: applicant tracking/recruitment software in the low‑to‑mid billions and sales intelligence/enablement in the low billions (e.g., ATS ≈ $2.7–3.3B; sales intelligence ≈ $3.3B) (MarketsandMarkets — ATS, Fortune Business Insights — ATS, Precedence — sales intelligence).

Bottom-up calculation:

Using list Pro pricing of $24/month billed annually (~$288/year), converting 1% of ~1M recruiters would be ~10,000 users or ~$2.9M ARR; converting 0.5% of 13.4M U.S. sales/related workers would be ~67,000 users or ~$19.3M ARR. Team/enterprise plans would raise ARPU beyond individual Pro (pricing, BLS — sales occupations, LinkedIn recruiter counts).

Assumptions:

• Conversion rates from the recruiter and sales populations are illustrative and achieved over time with a self‑serve plus sales‑assisted motion.
• List Pro pricing approximates realized ARPU for individuals; discounts and currency mix are ignored.
• Team/enterprise deals are secured with required permissioning/admin features and yield materially higher ARPU than individual Pro.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• LinkedIn Recruiter: The dominant candidate search and outreach tool built on LinkedIn’s graph; widely used by recruiters and hiring teams for talent discovery and warm paths.
• Gem: A recruiting CRM and outreach platform used by talent teams to source, track, and engage candidates across channels.
• SeekOut: AI‑powered talent search and sourcing for recruiters with deep filters and enrichment beyond LinkedIn.
• Affinity: A relationship‑intelligence CRM for dealmakers and sales teams that maps introductions and warm paths across team communications.
• ZoomInfo: A large B2B contact and company database used by sales teams for prospecting, enrichment, and outreach workflows.