Recruiter reached out to me on Linkedin to set up an initial phone call. Was pretty standard - took about 30 min just telling me about the company and asking me to walk through my resume. Got a second phone interview with the senior manager I'd be reporting to which was more of the same. Took a few days and never heard back. Recruiter was hard to reach by email. Finally got invited to an on-site interview and met with 5-6 diff people for 30 min each. Met with the finance guys (mostly i-bankers) who were mostly pleasant to talk to but a few of them were pretty socially awkward and couldn't keep eye contact which made it kind of awkward. Also met with one of the co-founders who was really nice to talk to.
Take-home assignment included analyzing their competitors (how they stack up, where they differ, etc), opportunities for the company, what things they could do to stand out, Threats to the company/industry, etc. They told me it would only take a couple hours but spent about 2 full days on it since theres a lot of competitors who do the same exact thing (close to 10).
Never heard back until 2 weeks later when I get an email from the recruiter saying "I just tried calling you but looks like I missed you" (I never received a missed call or a VM) and told me I didn't get the job. I emailed back to say thanks for letting me know and if the team had any feedback for me since I'm new to the startup world I would appreciate it and she never responded back even though she said "Please let me know if you have any questions." Also said "I'd love to keep in touch for any future openings" but after this experience no thanks!
I'm not mad I didn't get the job (I've been rejected plenty before) but to lie and say "just tried calling you" when you didn't? Looks like others have had a pretty poor interview experience with the recruiter(s) so not surprising. Overall experience with the company was decent but experience with the recruiter was definitely negative. Interesting company though. We'll see how they (and their competitors) hold up when the market turns.