Badge
Anonymous peer reviews that turn your work history into a portable Trust Score.
Tagline
Proof of work, not just resumes.
Anonymous peer proof that follows you anywhere.
Replace LinkedIn praise with verified trust.
Turn colleagues’ feedback into hiring signal.
Badge is a portable reputation layer for professionals who want proof of work that survives job changes.
The product is explicitly framed around a Trust Score that follows you across jobs, industries, layoffs, and freelance work, which is stronger than a profile-only tool and directly matches the page’s “proof of work” message.
Badge is the alternative to LinkedIn recommendations: anonymous, verified, and harder to fake.
The landing page repeatedly attacks LinkedIn endorsements as public, named, and overly positive, while Badge uses anonymous reviews with work-overlap verification and recruiter-facing discovery.
Badge is a pain-killer for invisible candidates buried under ATS filters and AI-generated resumes.
The page positions discoverability by Trust Score as the core benefit, which directly addresses the “resume pile” problem and the market’s growing distrust of polished but unproven applications.
Primary user
Individual contributors and managers actively job hunting who need stronger proof than a resume or LinkedIn profile
ICP #1
Senior software engineer at a mid-stage startup after a layoff
Pain
Their resume blends into hundreds of AI-polished applications, and the strongest proof of their work lives in former teammates’ memories, not in the application itself.
Why this solves
Badge converts colleagues’ firsthand feedback into a portable score and review layer that travels with them, giving recruiters a concrete trust signal before interviews.
ICP #2
Freelance product designer trying to land repeatable client work
Pain
They keep having to re-establish credibility from scratch for every proposal, and testimonials are awkward to request and easy to ignore.
Why this solves
Badge automates review collection through contacts and WhatsApp, then lets them display verified anonymous peer proof on a shareable profile and email signature.
ICP #3
Technical recruiter at a fast-growing startup hiring for high-signal roles
Pain
They waste time on candidates with inflated resumes and shallow LinkedIn endorsements, with very little evidence of how someone actually performs.
Why this solves
Badge gives recruiters ranked candidate profiles backed by verified anonymous reviews, making it easier to surface people with strong execution and collaboration signals.
Strengths
- +The core thesis is instantly clear: anonymous, verified peer reviews beat named LinkedIn endorsements.
- +It does a strong job tying the product to a painful market shift: AI-generated resumes and ATS-driven invisibility.
- +The workflow is easy to understand at a glance: connect contacts, give a review, build your score.
Weaknesses
- −The page overstates credibility with repeated recruiter logos and testimonials but offers no concrete proof of usage, volume, or outcomes.
- −The leaderboard section is empty (“No leaderboard data available”), which makes the product feel unfinished and weakens the social proof loop.
- −The phonebook-to-WhatsApp collection flow raises immediate privacy and consent concerns, but the landing page does not address security, permissions, or data handling clearly enough.
- −The message is too broad: it tries to sell candidates, freelancers, recruiters, and employers all at once without picking one wedge.
- −The Trust Score is never explained with any transparency around weighting, scoring criteria, or how recruiters should interpret it.
Fix these
- Pick one initial wedge and rewrite the homepage for it, most likely laid-off senior ICs and recruiters hiring for execution-heavy roles.
- Replace vague credibility claims with hard numbers: number of reviews collected, average response rate, time to first review, and recruiter conversion metrics.
- Add a transparent scoring explainer showing what changes a Trust Score and how anonymous reviews are weighted.
- Fix the empty leaderboard by either removing it or populating it with real named examples and anonymized scores.
- Add a trust and privacy section that explains contact permissions, WhatsApp outreach, reviewer consent, and how identity verification works.
Drop-in replacement copy
Headline
Proof of work beats polished resumes
Anonymous peer reviews that recruiters can verify
Verified reviews from real coworkers
Badge checks whether the reviewer actually worked with you before accepting a review. That makes the feedback harder to fake and more useful to recruiters.
Trust Score built from actual collaboration
The score reflects anonymous feedback on communication, reliability, delivery, and teamwork. Users and recruiters can see what contributes to the score instead of guessing.
WhatsApp outreach that does the asking
Badge finds likely colleagues from your phonebook and asks them targeted questions on your behalf. It removes the awkward follow-up and gets you more responses.
Shareable proof anywhere you apply
Add your Badge to a resume, LinkedIn profile, or email signature. Recruiters can browse it before the first call, and you control which reviews stay public or private.
FAQ
Isn’t this just LinkedIn recommendations with a new name?
No. LinkedIn recommendations are public, named, and usually inflated. Badge uses anonymous reviews, verifies work overlap, and shows a score recruiters can interpret faster.
How do you know the reviewer actually worked with me?
Badge checks for work overlap before accepting a review. The goal is to keep out random praise and only include feedback from people with real context.
What happens when Badge contacts my phonebook?
Badge only reaches out within the flow you authorize, and reviewers can choose whether their feedback is public or private. The consent flow needs to be explicit, because trust is the product.
What does the Trust Score mean?
It combines review quality and volume into one signal. Recruiters should use it as an early trust indicator, not a final hiring decision.
Who is Badge for first?
The best wedge is laid-off senior ICs and managers who need stronger proof than a resume, plus recruiters hiring for execution-heavy roles. Freelancers can use it too, but that’s not the first battlefield.
Resumes are easy to fake. Badge turns people who’ve actually worked with you into anonymous, verified peer reviews. No fluff. No named endorsements. Just a Trust Score recruiters can browse before they waste your time.
LinkedIn recommendations are broken. Nobody trusts public praise from 2019. Badge asks your real colleagues on WhatsApp, verifies overlap, and turns their feedback into a portable Trust Score. That’s closer to how hiring should work.
We kept seeing the same problem. Great people get buried under AI resumes and ATS filters. So we built Badge: an AI agent that finds former colleagues, asks for anonymous feedback, verifies work overlap, and packages it into something recruiters can actually use.
The scary part was privacy. If you’re asking someone’s contacts for reviews, you better make consent and visibility controls obvious. Badge lets users choose public or private per review, and we’re making the permission flow painfully clear.
100 AI-polished resumes later, recruiters still don’t know who can ship. Badge gives them a verified trust signal from people who actually worked with the candidate. Less guesswork. Fewer interviews with professional oversellers.
Your best proof is trapped in ex-teammates’ heads. Badge pulls it out anonymously, verifies the relationship, and puts it on a profile you can share in a resume, LinkedIn bio, or email signature.
Watch this replace endorsement spam. 1) Connect contacts 2) Badge finds people you worked with 3) It asks them targeted questions on WhatsApp 4) Verified reviews become your Trust Score Simple. Useful. Harder to fake.
One profile. One score. Real signal. Badge collects anonymous feedback on collaboration, communication, reliability, and delivery. Then it ranks you for recruiters based on actual peer proof instead of whatever your resume claims.
Recruiters keep asking for proof. Not more keywords. Not another skill badge. They want to know: did this person ship, collaborate, and stay sane under pressure? Badge makes that visible before the first call.
Freelancers need trust fast. Badge turns former collaborators into anonymous proof you can show on proposals and email signatures. That’s way better than begging for a testimonial after the project is already over.
Angle: Portable reputation for laid-off ICs
Most resumes fail at the exact moment hiring gets noisy. When candidates are polished by AI and filtered by ATS, the real question becomes: who actually worked well with others? That’s why we built Badge. It collects anonymous peer reviews from people you’ve actually worked with, verifies overlap, and turns that feedback into a Trust Score recruiters can browse. Not public praise. Not vanity endorsements. A portable reputation layer that follows you across jobs, layoffs, and industries. The best proof of work should survive job changes. We’re starting with senior ICs and managers who need stronger signal than a resume can give. If you’re hiring for execution-heavy roles, I’d love your feedback on what would make this actually useful in a screening workflow.
Angle: Alternative to LinkedIn recommendations
LinkedIn recommendations have a trust problem. They’re public, named, overly positive, and easy to game. Everyone knows it. Nobody likes it. But hiring still leans on them because there hasn’t been a better default. Badge is built to be that better default. Anonymous reviews. Verified work overlap. Targeted questions about collaboration, communication, reliability, and delivery. The goal is not more social proof. The goal is better proof. If someone is a great teammate, that should show up in a way recruiters can actually use. I’m curious where this breaks for you: candidate trust, reviewer consent, or recruiter workflow?
Angle: Recruiter signal over resume noise
Recruiters don’t need more candidate profiles. They need a way to tell the real operators from the people who only know how to write a strong bullet point. Badge ranks candidates by a Trust Score built from verified peer reviews. That gives hiring teams a faster way to find people with real collaboration and execution signal before they spend time on interviews. I think this matters more now than ever because the resume has become a formatting exercise. The interesting question is whether hiring teams will trust a new signal if it’s transparent enough. So that’s what we’re focused on next: clear scoring, visible verification, and obvious privacy controls. If you’ve hired recently, what would you need to see before this becomes part of your process?
No visuals for this kit yet.
Tagline
Anonymous peer proof for your next job
Description
Badge collects verified anonymous reviews from people you actually worked with, turns them into a Trust Score, and lets recruiters browse real proof of collaboration, reliability, and delivery.
Maker's first comment
I built Badge after watching strong people get crushed by noisy hiring. Resumes got easier to polish. LinkedIn recommendations got easier to ignore. But the best signal about someone’s work has always lived with the people who actually shipped with them. Badge is my attempt to make that signal portable. It asks your real colleagues for anonymous feedback, verifies that you actually overlapped at work, and turns the responses into a Trust Score that can travel with you across jobs, layoffs, and freelance work. I know this space is sensitive. Privacy, consent, and trust are not side issues here — they’re the product. So we’ve been obsessing over how contacts are reached, how reviewer consent works, and what users can control at the review level. If you try it, I’d especially love feedback from two groups: people job hunting right now, and recruiters who screen for execution-heavy roles. What would make this feel credible enough to use?
Pinned maker comment
Feedback I want most: is the Trust Score understandable, and do the privacy controls feel explicit enough?
Meta
Resumes don’t show how you work.
Hypothesis: laid-off senior ICs and managers will respond to a proof-of-work pitch more than another job board style message. Badge collects anonymous peer reviews from people you actually worked with, verifies overlap, and turns it into a Trust Score recruiters can browse.
Google Search
anonymous peer reviews for job seekers
Hypothesis: people searching for stronger job application proof will convert when the ad matches their exact pain: resume noise and weak endorsements. Badge turns verified colleague feedback into a portable Trust Score you can share on resumes, LinkedIn, and email signatures.
Reddit Promoted
LinkedIn recommendations feel fake.
Hypothesis: indie-minded professionals in job-hunting and career subreddits will click a contrarian angle that attacks weak social proof. Badge asks real coworkers for anonymous feedback on WhatsApp, verifies overlap, and gives you a score that says more than endorsements do.
Subreddits
r/SideProject
Show the product and ask builders if anonymous trust signals would help hiring
Rules: No pure promotion; include what you built, why, and ask for feedback. Keep it honest and specific.
r/indiehackers
How we’re testing a portable reputation layer for job seekers
Rules: Share process, numbers, and lessons. Avoid spammy launch language.
r/microsaas
Tiny niche product for job seekers and recruiters
Rules: Focus on product mechanics and validation. Don’t post vague marketing.
r/EntrepreneurRideAlong
Building trust infrastructure for hiring in public
Rules: People like narrative and progress updates. Be transparent about traction and what you’re learning.
r/careerguidance
Ask whether people would use anonymous verified peer reviews to strengthen applications
Rules: Must be useful to members. Frame as a question about job search pain, not a pitch.
Communities
Post a build log with numbers: response rate, review completion rate, and recruiter feedback. Comment on other hiring and SaaS threads first so the launch doesn’t feel dropped in cold.
Target recruiters and GTM operators. Share the recruiter workflow angle: faster screening, less resume noise, better candidate signal.
Join discussions around hiring, trust, and marketplace quality. Ask for blunt feedback on whether a Trust Score would fit into hiring decisions.
On Deck / talent circles
Find private talent and operator groups where members are actively job hunting or hiring. Offer early access and ask for direct critique on the consent flow.
Cold outreach template
Hey {firstName} — saw you were hiring for {context}. We built Badge to turn verified peer feedback from people someone actually worked with into a Trust Score recruiters can browse. If I sent you a 2-minute demo, would you tell me whether this is useful or total noise?
Product Hunt timing
Launch on Tuesday morning Pacific time after you’ve collected at least 20 real reviews and 5 recruiter screenshots or quotes. That gives you enough proof to avoid the ‘cool idea, but is this real?’ trap.
Indie Hackers post ideas
- 01We turned peer reviews into a portable Trust Score for job seekers
- 02How we tested WhatsApp-based review collection without feeling creepy
- 03What recruiters actually think of anonymous verified reviews
Competitor alternatives
Current tone of voice
Confident, insurgent, and anti-LinkedIn, with punchy lines like “LinkedIn recommendations are broken” and “Resumes tell me what they did. Peer reviews tell me how they did it.”
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