When the market wasn’t ready, and I learned why

The situation

Juncture was an AI applicant tracking system, and my first time on the product side, in about the hardest market you could pick. Myanmar had never used an ATS. We were the first, selling AI to people who had never met it, in a two-sided market where both sides were cold. On one end, HR teams. On the other, jobseekers, mostly blue-collar, tech-unfamiliar, short on time, and already paying 5,000 MMK to someone who made them a CV on a free Canva template. Educating both sides at once, on a small budget, in a market with no existing habit to build on, was the real product.

What we tried

• Ran HR podcasts and sat down with HR teams and developers directly, to learn how hiring actually worked here and pull real feedback into the product.
• Tested pricing strategies to find a number a cost-sensitive jobseeker and a small HR team could both say yes to.
• Tried to educate two audiences at once, employers and jobseekers, each of whom needed a completely different story before they would even consider an ATS.

What I learned

• A first-mover in a market with no habit is not selling a better product, it is paying to create the whole category. That bill is bigger than any early-stage budget.
• In a two-sided market, the weaker side sets the ceiling. Our jobseekers had no reason and no time to change how they applied, so no amount of HR interest could pull them through.
• Adoption is cultural, not just functional. People were not rejecting the features, they were rejecting a new behavior. Positioning cannot fix a habit a market is not ready to form.
• I would rather learn this on a real product than in a deck. It is why I now open every plan with “is the market ready,” not just “is the product good.”