【CATALYST Co., Ltd.】"Job Seeker Data Platform" Automatically Generating Resumes and CVs in 5 Minutes Using Generative AI

Self-Introduction and CATALYST's Mission

Hello, everyone. My name is Ito Yamamoto, the representative of CATALYST Co., Ltd. Thank you for having me today. We have recently launched a new "Job Seeker Data Platform Business" with the mission of contributing to the improvement of Japan's overall productivity.

We have assembled a stellar team to tackle this massive challenge. My career has always revolved around marketing innovation and business growth. I have gained extensive experience at CyberAgent, NTT DATA, and currently at Google. The reason I am currently at Google during this startup phase is to leverage the cutting-edge AI knowledge, networks, and marketing expertise that are indispensable for our business. After securing our funding, I will commit 100% of my time to CATALYST. Furthermore, supporting the technical foundation of CATALYST and embodying our vision into a product is our system engineer, Kawakita, who is an expert in LLM (Large Language Model) research. Together, we are driving this business forward.

Challenges in the Recruitment Market and the "Heavy Burden of Resume Creation"

Currently, data shows that approximately 60% of employed workers in Japan are unsatisfied with their current jobs. Furthermore, average wages in Japan have unfortunately stagnated or even declined since the 1990s. As a result, more people are seeking better work environments, leading to an oversaturated market of various recruitment services.

However, even when candidates decide to change careers, many find themselves lost, not knowing where to begin. In fact, a survey shows that about 40% of job seekers spend a massive amount of time simply preparing their application documents. We believe this tediousness and the burden of creation act as major bottlenecks preventing talent mobility and productivity growth in Japan. Specifically, 48.8% of IT engineers responded that writing professional CVs is the most painful process in their job search.

Product Demonstration of "CATALYST" Leveraging Generative AI

CATALYST is a service designed to solve all these hassles in the job search process through the power of Generative AI, supporting candidates in taking their next career steps with unprecedented speed.

Users only need to answer simple step-by-step questions about their name, work history, skill sets, and qualifications. With our meticulously refined UI/UX, the platform automatically generates highly detailed, compelling resumes and CVs tailored to catch the eyes of hiring managers in just 4 to 5 minutes.

Competitiveness and the Overwhelming Quality of Documents`

Our top priority is the "quality" of the generated application documents. Compared to the auto-generation features provided by traditional recruitment agencies, we can confidently say that CATALYST's generation accuracy and output quality are in a league of their own.

Rather than just filling in templates, we craft resumes that truly resonate with hiring managers. Since we handle precious personal information, we have built a robust system with ironclad security and privacy protection.

Market Potential and Target Strategy

With 3.8 million annual job switchers in Japan, this is a massive market. We are targeting approximately 200,000 job seekers in the information and communications industry as our initial core target, where early adopters are abundant, talent mobility is high, and hiring costs are elevated. We aim to achieve rapid Product-Market Fit (PMF) by focusing on IT engineers who feel the heaviest burden in document creation.

Product Roadmap and The Ask

Our product strategy is divided into two phases: - Phase 1: We will focus heavily on polishing usability to deliver CATALYST's core value to as many job seekers as possible. We are also preparing new features, such as an AI-powered mock interview practice tool. - Phase 2: We will leverage the accumulated data to diversify our business, evolving from a simple document creator into a true "Job Seeker Data Platform." Our strength lies in our ability to establish early touchpoints with job seekers, which will drastically lower our customer acquisition cost (CAC) when we expand into multi-vertical services.

To realize this vision, we are raising a seed round of 30 million yen (The Ask). We released our open beta this month and are preparing for a full launch. We invite you to join us in shaping the future of recruitment. Thank you.

Q&A and Feedback

Cometator (Hatenamori): Thank you for the wonderful presentation. I enjoyed it very much. If I understand correctly, this business model does not charge the job seekers directly, but instead monetizes through sourcing fees or advertisements to recruitment agencies and companies. I have two questions. First, auto-generation services without AI have existed before, but they failed to gain significant traction. What is the critical difference with CATALYST? Second, since your core target is IT engineers, wouldn't they be able to easily write their CVs using ChatGPT or other LLMs on their own? How do you view this?

Ito Yamamoto: Thank you for your questions. Regarding monetization, as you pointed out, we do not charge users. Instead, we aim to build a high-quality job seeker database early on and monetize through business diversification and sourcing.

Regarding your first question about the difference from existing services, the key differentiator is the "overwhelming quality" of the output. The auto-generation features provided by traditional agencies are merely hooks to increase their user pool; they do not focus on maximizing the quality of the documents themselves. We focus purely on document quality to create "documents that get selected," which sets us apart.

As for your second question about IT engineers using LLMs themselves, while it is technically possible, doing it manually still involves significant hassle—finding templates, writing effective prompts, and formatting the output. CATALYST eliminates all of these manual steps, providing an optimized experience where a perfect document is ready in just 4 to 5 minutes. We believe this extreme efficiency and time-saving value will be highly attractive to engineers as well.