In tech, I have found the best way to stand out is a personal technical blog. Write about things you’ve worked on. Doing is the best way to learn, and writing about doing is the second best way to show you know. (The first is a demo.)
The LinkedIn feed problem can be solved by not going to the feed.
What would be an argument that this platform sucks less?
I don't want to record videos of me presenting myself.
LinkedIn seems simple. I post a CV and I toggle if I am open to work or not. Recruiters can find me and I can search for jobs and apply to them. That is all the functionality I need apart from having lots of jobs available on the platform.
My quick feedback / first impressions
One benefit of an algorithmic feed is that it works as as social proof in showing me that other people are actually using the site. Since your site doesn't have a feed apparently by design, you'll need some way of showing me (quickly!) that this is a living, breathing website that people actually use, otherwise it feels like I'm shouting into the void.
Another benefit of a feed is that I can immediately see how my activities and updates will look to other people. But it's not clear during onboarding how things will look to others, let alone who can see my profile and activity. Can any other user view my profile, or is it just a select cohort of hiring managers? Can I even interact with other users on this site who aren't hiring managers?
Next, after I import my resume and setup my profile, I am asked (I think) to write some sort of an article or essay with AI assistance. This step wasn't very clear, but even if it were, this is a huge ask for someone who just started using your site. The first ask should be something much less ambitious, and probably would benefit from gamification to make it feel less like homework
Finally, I clicked on the explore button to try to find folks to connect with. I gave a detailed description of the personas I'm interested in to the bot, and ended up getting a "No matching Candidates found" message. I think you should at least show me something, especially when I can't seem to do a regular search / browse manually -- or suggest better queries
Anyway, I know it's an MVP, and I see answers to some of my questions on your about page, but just offering this as food for thought. The overall onboarding was smooth and I appreciate the resume import experience, and I think you have a strong visual identity. Curious to see where you end up taking this
> But I always wondered: why isn’t there a platform designed to help you stand out like that?
Obviously, because if you make a whole platform like that, nobody stands out any more, but everyone if forced to do more (unpaid) work than they did before. For the recruiters/hiring managers it is impossible to process video and audio at scale either.
You can actually turn off LinkedIn’s recommendations here: https://lnkd.in/gQHsR8ps
Change it to “Most recent posts” and you’ll stop getting random influencers in your feed telling you that vibe coding is the future.
I also find LinkedIn spammy and I’m fed up of videos everywhere, so for me the answer is definitely not more videos, sorry.
The reason I hate LinkedIn is because I haven't had one straightforward career path. I rewrite my resume to tailor it to whatever I'm applying to next, which generally means removing all the descriptions of each of my old jobs and updating them with the tailored version every time I apply somewhere.
I don't really think there's a way to fix that, because I don't think there are enough of us (or enough people looking to hire us) to build a substantial userbase.
I just want to highlight it as one of the reasons some people hate LinkedIn, which has nothing to do with spammy feeds or influencers.
I tried this years ago. Some advice: target your marketing and product at “beautiful+easy portfolio” to start. See if you can make something beautiful people want to share, and when other people see one they want to create their own.
You can’t compete against LinkedIn on network for now, and many years to come. So need to talk about the now value. But try to build in network effects (tag who you worked with) as soon as you manage to crack growth.
Or ignore me. My version didn’t work!
Best of luck. I've been wanting to build this for 2 years but don't have the time or passion available to do it justice.
My goals overlap a lot.
If you haven't seen https://huntr.co I think they do a great job helping you manage job hunting.
I think the social feed is LinkedIn's weakness as well. It creates a bad incentive for the company. I would use it a lot more if the feed was useful instead of fake engagement bait. Same with LinkedIn Learning being more about basic entry level courses than quality expert content.
My suggestion is to help people build valuable networks that discuss actual hard topics. I've seen a few companies try to create small exclusive groups that cost money to join but they try to guarantee meaningful, intelligent discussions & sharing. LinkedIn once tried to limit your network, which I still think was the right way to run it.
A popular marketing technique is to be the "Anti" company. I hope you can pull off the Anti-LinkedIn. The copywriting for that should write itself.
One more aside on recruiting. LinkedIn's infamous for terrible recruiters trying to fill quotas it seems. I don't know if recruiters need limits on messaging people or some type of ranking system.
I'll have to wait til later but I think this is a great idea and needs to be done. I think it's somewhat of an embarrassment to us all that LinkedIn is the current de facto place for our professional presence.
It's not about the platform itself, it's the users.
Am I going to be able to find new customers on this platform, consistently, like I do in LinkedIn? If not, why would I spend the X number of hours I have dedicated this month to finding new clients on this platform?
If you can Crack this nut you will have no problem finding users.
Just a casual comment: I kept thinking the URL said "Honeypot", so I was a little worried I was clinking a dangerous link.
Please be prepared for the onslaught of spam, SEO, porn that is most definitely going to happen.
I wish you luck.
Its not about the product or features any more - LinkedIn wins because of its network.
LinkedIn has definitely gotten worse but your solution seems too social to me, a more sober version of LinkedIn would be enough Thanks
I don't want to film myself. I don't want to upload my photos online. My work should do the talking.
In fact, your platform is broken, since its focus on visual selling is the same bias as having photos on a resume. So you are not improving over LinkedIn.
Make a primarily text only platform, and visual showcase should only be of things you have done. All non-objective things should be removed. Then make hooks for applying to jobs so everything gets filled in one click.
I feel like any LinkedIn alternative is doomed to end the same way. Because most of its problems come from corporate culture itself.
> with video, audio, and proof of your work
No text, I see. It's so last century.
> No endless feeds. No humblebrags. Just real people open to new opportunities.
Question is: when the people from Linkedin come to your site, won't they post the same crap as they do on Linkedin?
the trick on linkedin is simply to 'unfollow' everyone so you don't see their inane posts / cries for attention.
I'd guess that your platform will inevitably contain the same dross. LinkedIn Lunatics are probably platform agnostic.
There are three parts to linkedin;
(1) the user facing feeds, the social media part most people see
(2) the recruiter platform that recruiters are addicted to, and the integrations with other platforms to this bit.
(3) the advertising platform that marketers/employer brand teams can run paid targeted advertising at prospects etc.
This will fail like every similar thing because Linkedin has the market sewn up from every angle. There's a reason Microsoft paid 26 billion for it.
My advice to anyone, get yourself on LinkedIn, fill out your profile as much as your can, join the relevant groups in the industry you are in, network in real life.
Works only in the US. Worth mentioning.
Your platform would be illegal in my country, because it gives employers ways to discriminate (on physical appearance and sex, in particular).
Ah, another tech solution to a social cold start problem.
LinkedIn's value is that everyone is on it. Even super secretive Apple employees - Apple couldn't force them to delete their stuff. Talk about a powerful network effect. Just start browsing, see for yourself: https://www.linkedin.com/company/apple/people/
LI's value is not in the UI, not in the features. Just like FB, YT, WhatsApp, etc - they took off while no one else did, not because better tech, but by hitting a virality inflection point.
This is a hard problem to solve, people like Nikita Bier are the equivalent to rocket scientists in that area. And while they can launch a viral app for teenagers, the "easiest" early adopter group, repeatedly and flip it for cash - they can't figure out how to crack LinkedIn.
Think of it as a virus/pandemic problem. Who are the super spreaders that pull in the rest of the normies? What is the initial value for THEM to join in the first place? I can tell you that a special social network for Doctors, publicly listed now, had to give their initial cohort of docs STOCK in the company to be on the platform. Talk about dilution...
So, sorry, forget about the shiny UI. How do you infect and take over the LinkedIn host? They fight scraping left and right.
Personally I am so happy to work in enterprise SaaS...so much easier than the above :)
This doesn’t solve the problem with LinkedIn.
One problem with LinkedIn to find jobs is that every job applicstion gets hundreds of applications. Your site won’t have any jobs available - that’s the opposite problem.
I have looked for and found jobs 7x since 2012 when I joined LinkedIn. Two of those jobs came from my reaching out to recruiters who posted jobs that I was somewhat uniquely qualified for. Those people won’t be on your site.
The other two were from recruiters reaching out to me based on a search on skills. Those people won’t be on your site either.
Not to mention that when I’m looking to find out about my interviewers, manager etc, I’m not looking on your site either, neither are they looking for me there.
A large part of my profile is also recommendations.
What problem are you trying to solve?
When I click the sign up from the front page, it takes me to a login page that says my credentials are invalid. Then I see another sign-up link.
If I click sign up from the front page just take me straight to the sign-up page.
Looks nice.
Immediate feedback:
- The mobile v. desktop detection seems based on the screen width, which would be reasonable if it didn't mean halting my onboarding process because my browser window ain't maximized.
- The auto-generated profile didn't capture much from my résumé or LinkedIn profile. Only the two most recent roles plus some early-career freelance work; that covers maybe 20% or so of my overall career.
- Related to the above, it'd be useful to have more control over the (what appears to be) AI-generated summarizations of things.
- No way to reorder the "key accomplishments"?
- A place to list certifications and (in my case) clearances would be handy.
Cool.
I use linkedin and pay for premium but the problem it solves for me is very different. If I want to find out how to reach an organisation to do sales, I need to know the structure of the organization and who I know that knows people who work there. I don't even use the linkedin-platform messaging. Really it's about how to coordinate my rolodex so I can get warm introductions.
I have posted a few jobs on linkedin and they immediately get 1000s of applicants, with very poor signal-to-noise ratio. We don't use it for job postings anymore, we instead do more specific targeting.
>We’ve already onboarded a few companies....with other standout folks and supercharge your network.
As soon as I read 'onboarded', and 'supercharge your network', I gave up (being young[er], I guess).
There's a lot of correct feedback about why this is not an amazing start for something starting as a marketplace for talent.
This could be a beautiful start for a Linkedin alternative focused on freelancers, entrepreneurs, etc. Maybe even people in specific industries whose Linkedin currently does more than get them their next job (sales comes to mind, but also folks who work at design agencies and need to get clients, and have a profile they attach somewhere in the about us section).
I wish you the best in this endeavor, but what made LinkedIn suck wasn't anything to do with LinkedIn and everything to do with becoming a social network that businesses could use to substitute for good old-fashion contact-finding. This damaged it in two ways: people started bending their accounts to be more (or less, because the spam problem is real!) attractive, and businesses started shotgunning recruiting info far past where it would be useful to the recipient.
If your experiment takes off, I don't know how it avoids the same fate.
Linked in is a mess, for sure. What I liked from it was verified identities. SoftwareDev-land could maybe make something that was Git backed, extensive and allow for secondary evaluation of the claims made - https://gist.github.com/paul-hammant/3375fec8e204f0c7567d4da.... Perhaps tossing out privacy as it does so :(
I personally like Linkedin - it's so trashy that it makes me work harder to retire early to get away from all those crazy prople. Or at least to close the tab ASAP.
You lost me as soon as I saw users can create content.
All platforms become bad as soon as you allow average Joe speak his mind.
The only ones that somewhat save themselves are the likes of HN and Reddit where it's all about discussing, but users are mostly anonymous and not trying to promote their brand.
Congrats on the launch. Another big annoyance of LinkedIn is that the UI performance feels sluggish on desktop. The app kills my battery on mobile.
Had a look at your site and the carousel seems to slow down the entire site for me. Scrolling becomes janky and it's a drag to scroll down. I'm using Firefox and also tried it in a chromium based browser.
The carousel itself also jumps to the beginning when it reaches the end, i.e. it's not a seamless loop.
I'm not sure if Linkedin is actually that 'broken'. My LinkedIn-feed has always been worse that my Facebook-feed, but that is simply because the world of work has forced me to spend time with a small minority of terrible people whom I would normally avoid.
However, crucially, as a peer reviewed CV machine and recruiting platform, Linkedin is... fine. In fact its actually quite good.
Thought it would be more "open"/federated/open-source. Honestly not interested in another platform like this.
While I wish you well, I guess my only question is what you complain about are cultural issues with linkedin which I don't think wouldn't happen on any other platform too. Is it because it is "curated?" Couldn't anyone game that kind of curation too and then eventually the site would devolve into the same fakeness that plagues linkedin?
Love your approach of video resumes. We share the same vision and recently built a flow for users to easily create a professional resume videos themselves. Our tech automates the entire process. Check it out and maybe we can partner https://www.takeone.video/resume-videos
Thank you - LinkedIn became extremely annoying over time. I'll check how it compares, when I'm hiring for my team.
LinkedIn even has Tiktok like videos (near misses, etc.). Every time I see those, I just wonder "why"?
Sounds what people ar looking for is a "professionals only" feed where average Joe has nothing to say. I honestly don't know enough about social media to say whether that's realistic. All i can think about is YouTube Community but with a set limit of subs/views
Why couldn't we have something decentralised there too? Like blogs/RSS or AT proto, but for CVs and networking? Some kind of protocol on top of micro formats?
That still works with LinkedIn (at least in one way, as it's obvious LinkedIn won't ever reciprocate).
You managed to make a web app in 2025 that has almost no HTML semantics and almost no keyboard accessibility (so very clearly and deeply not WCAG-conformant). Gosh, I haven't seen that in quite a while. Mind sharing which tools you used to make it?
Your About page doesn't work. I'd not share personal information with an anonymous company.
Currently experience lists based on start date, which is usually a good indicator. But anything that has an end date of "Present" should probably be bubbled to the top of the list. Or at least the users should be able to pick the order.
It's all about network effects.
I don't care about recruiters. Don't need a job. With the demise of Twitter and Facebook not being interesting for professional purposes, LinkedIn is just the best medium for professional outreach.
It's just a good way to reach professional contacts.
Read.cv was the only professional networking website that I enjoyed using (and many others too). It was authentic, unpretentious, and without gimmicks. If anyone wants to make something similar, look at what they did for inspiration.
Looks slick but your call to action is off; No one wants "more interviews" they want a job! So don't advertise that your product will lead to more interviews, advertise that it will lead to a job.
Got a message saying you're working hard on creating a mobile experience in the meantime to try desktop. But when I put it into desktop mode from brave on my pixel, it still gave me the same message.
I wish I could tag filter and control what I see on my feed for example political content on LinkedIn is largely an unfollow event for me. Also I’d like to be able to filter for recruiter content and just jobs.
The real problem is that a professional network is just kinda boring.
If you replicate that aspect of LinkedIn then not much is achieved.
The real opportunity is to create a trust network for granting access to send email.
It looks interesting for sure. Sadly, LinkedIn is going to be relevant for quiet a long time still, just because of how many people and companies are there. Ill give your site a try.
Feedback:
I'd really like to be able to some some sample profiles from users before I decide to sign up and commit to anything at all.
The problem with resume sites is that you only need them for a short period every X years in those months you're looking for a job. Then you never touch it again. The social features of Linkein, as awful as they are, keep users engaged and active regularly even while they are employed.
Lots of people pooping all over the video feature but I think it's a pretty decent idea. Especially for roles where spoken communication is a key requirement (community, DevRel, etc). I could see it having unintended consequences though. I suppose it is something you can change your mind about later and remove.
My only advice is to make it selective--i.e., you need to apply to get your profile on it. That's the only way you will break LinkedIn's network effects.
It’s a lot of fonts. Looks like similar design as runway ml. A site to help people stand out that fails to stand out. Looks very clean and tidy though.
Whew, I was hoping there’d be a second LinkedIn at some point. Surely it will not be very quickly ruined by influencers like everything else, ever.
> So I built OpenSpot: a public, curated platform where you can showcase who you are — with video, audio, and proof of your work. No endless feeds. No humblebrags. Just real people open to new opportunities
You can already do this in many places and it still will be more noise than signal.
This pitch seems more aimed at solving a want from the type of companies that want a one way interview (film yourself telling us who you are) to save on resources than anything else.
It's even worse when you consider that in the word of LLMs they'll still want to parse those automatically into recommendation and filter systems.
I don't think you'll really love our thoughts. Heh.
Really like your vision. The “no endless feeds, no humblebrags, just real people” pitch really resonates.
LinkedIn feels exhausting, so I’m definitely going to give OpenSpot a try.
Wishing you the best
The idea of making your profile feel more like a personal pitch makes a ton of sense. Honestly surprised something like this doesn’t already exist at scale.
https://peerlist.io is a good contender too. Have you folks tried it?
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and is now integrated into Outlook and Office. It might suck, but it has VAST reach.
I hate it. That is my first impression and I'm sticking to it. Ugly, soul-less, modern design typified by giant typography, dark mode, huge blank spaces, and an annoying video of the person shilling themself. I hate the name as well. "Hey" is not a polite greeting. It hope this fails tremendously. What a waste of time.
Looks like Linkedin with a new CSS
Your landing page is extremely slow and laggy on Safari on my Mac Mini for some reason.
Nice project! Curious to know what stack you're using for the analytics?
there was a better LinkedIn, it was called Read.cv. unfortunately, they've been bought by Perplexity (which is a shame because Read.cv is a perfect product while Perplexity is snake oil)
Don't tell us that you built a better LinkedIn. Tell us how you will remain a better one if you ever become successful.
LinkedIn was (arguably) a better place too before its unavoidable enshittification. How are you different? How will you remain more principled? How will you prevent the issues (say, the existence of "influencers") that turned LinkedIn into the awful place that it is today, especially if you get funded by some VC in the future?
Why not use the AT Protocol like bluesky? (assuming you don't)
I like the idea of blending a portfolio-style showcase with some kind of network on top. Consider how to maintain meaningful engagement without falling into the same pitfalls as existing social media.
Some ideas:
Avoid Engagement for Engagement’s Sake – Features like posting and analytics can create the same inauthentic cycles seen on other platforms, where users engage primarily to boost metrics and reach rather than build genuine connections.
Encourage Thoughtful Interaction – Consider placing limits on outreach, such as allowing only one new direct message per day. This ensures that when someone reaches out, it’s intentional and meaningful, not spam.
Resist Monetisation Pitfalls – Rather than introducing premium features like LinkedIn’s paywalls or sponsored content, a fair enterprise model such as paid job postings section could sustain the platform without diluting its core value.
Your approach is promising, and with the right focus, OpenSpot could offer a genuinely valuable alternative. Best of luck!
I'm in EU, sad it's not available there.
I'm fed up with LinkedIn
the future where you have to be a micro-influencer and sell (to use the diplomatic word) yourself out on social media to land a job is a dystopian one.
It would be great to see this add ActivityPub.
Ill check it out.
I agree "LinkedIn sucks".
What is your stance on privacy?
Honestly seems like it would be better to build a browser extension that makes LI livable, rather than trying to david-and-goliath them. Taking them on is unlikely to succeed, and even though you'll have to adapt the extension as their site changes, you'll be able to get some passionate fans who use your tool.
I can see this pivoting into YouTube 2.0
flashy and gimmicky, actually I'd rather use linkedin
LinkedIn is not just only for jobs, it's also about networking
Xing just exists.
Only in the U.S: Network is everything, it doesn't have to be 88% market share. But if it is 0.01%, and limited to 4% of the geo population, good luck. Open up to 200 countries, people can't even sign up while on a trip oversea.
Honestly, this looks really cool. LinkedIn has become almost unusable for actually finding interesting people or jobs.
This is dope!
Eh, my impression this looks like Figma or a design tool. not a social network
LinkedIn was created basically for headhunters to pay to contact people and search. That's why it's such junk. It's there to trap "candidates" with an endless feed of dreck, long enough to get headhunters interested in paying to spam them.
We, the candidates, don't need a place to "stand out", like an Instagram for Jobs. We shouldn't be "making content" at all. Nobody should have to create a multimedia presentation to get a job interview.
My own department at work has been working for months to try to find a candidate for a couple positions. Yet there's supposedly so many people out of work? Either everyone out of work is terrible, or the way we find and filter candidates is terrible. I think it's the latter. And I think it's time for an engineering approach. No more bullshit resumes, bullshit headhunters, and bullshit social media. Let's solve this problem, once and for all.
What I think we need, is fine-grained, data-informed, weighted and sorted matching. Show me the people/companies who match what I'm looking for, and sort them based on my criteria.
For candidates:
- How do you do your best work? (select an option, with weighting)
- How many years have you practiced trunk-based development? (select an option, with weighting)
- How much experience do you have with X framework? (select an option, with weighting)
- How many years experience to you have working with blockchain technologies? (select an option, with weighting)
- How much do performance reviews affect merit increase or bonus? (select an option, with weighting)
- How much vacation time do you offer? (select an option, with weighting)
- What kind of presence do you require? (select an option, with weighting)
- Does your engineering department have thorough on-call documentation? (select an option, with weighting)
You may not like the examples above, but they're not the point. The point is that we all have questions we'd like to ask, either way. We'd all like to cut out all the BS, like having to tailor all your life's work down to 2 pages of one-line snippets. We'd all like to cut through candidates who won't match our company's culture. And we shouldn't have to read a bunch of 2-page summaries that don't really tell us anything, only to then have a dozen 30-minute calls just to tell us what could have been in an e-mail.
> supercharge
kthxbye
Thank. You. For. This. `\o/` LinkedIn is a cess pit. (see r/linkedinlunatics)
I apologize this is not directly related to OP, but if you, like myself, get mad at all the "Suggested" posts LinkedIn is pushing on you, you can use the following ublock filter to get rid of these posts:
www.linkedin.com##:xpath(//span[text()="Suggested"]//ancestor::div/div[contains(@data-id, "activity")])
Anyone remember polywork.com ?
Their tagline was "Your professional network"
They closed in early 2025
LinkedIn may suck.
Let me retract that.
It definitely sucks (For me - it sucks because of non-professional posts in the feed. memes, political rants, funny pics etc.)
But there are good parts as well.
The most important thing going on for them is they have network effect.
Everyone (and their grandma, as they say) is on LinkedIn
When I was interviewing, I used to check the LinkedIn profile for the candidate as well. (Lot of times, after the interview in case I had good things to say in my feedback form)
Having said that - Best wishes to OpenSpot.
> LinkedIn feels more like Facebook every day
You can also restrict yourself to following friends, and disable notifications from people who write too much crap. I do this and my feed is acceptable.
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
You will sell out when the VC money starts flowing in.
/s
[flagged]
[flagged]
[flagged]
I don't quite understand people's problem with LinkedIn - for me it has only one real page, my profile, and two other areas: recruiter chat and people I might know personally to link to. I got a job via recruiter chat on it once, and I drop in every few months or years to add a dot point to the resume. There's nothing else on that site?
Why are there photos on a resume site, and featured so prominently? It's not Tinder.
US HR used to throw away any photos that people attached to resumes. (Usually someone attaching a photo was a recent immigrant, who didn't know the US convention.)
I've even heard rumors that some companies/screeners had a policy of throwing away resumes that included photos or other gratuitous information that could be the basis for illegal/problematic discrimination.
"Because LinkedIn does it" isn't a good argument, because LinkedIn is pretty awful, and the only things going for it are: (1) the majority of people are on it, and (2) recruiters sometimes search/spam there.
Some social media sites do photos because they pander to the worst. Or, in the case of one prominent social media site, infamously because the original inspiration was to catalog the best-looking women at their college.
Unless you're a headshots site/app for hiring models/actors, best to go with content-of-their-character, and all that.