- Jopwell is a career advancement platform for black, Latinx, and Native American students and professionals.
- It was created to address the issue of companies claiming they couldn't find diverse talent.
- The founder's personal background and experiences led to the recognition of the lack of diversity in various industries.
- The idea for Jopwell came about when tech companies released statistics on their lack of diversity.
- The founder and his co-founder wanted to make an impact and build a profitable business using technology to connect employers with diverse talent.
- The founder had no technical background but believed in the potential of the platform.
- They started by creating a pitch deck and securing soft commitments from companies to be customers.
- They raised money, hired people, and built the platform.

- The founders were able to raise $500,000 in funding within a month and a half
- They hired their first engineer and built the MVP in November-December
- They applied to New York Techstars but did not get in
- They launched the platform in January and gained traction quickly
- They applied to YC and got in for the summer session
- Jopwell aims to be a referral platform for underrepresented employees in tech and finance
- Users can apply to companies that value diversity through Jopwell
- The community has grown through word of mouth and strategic partnerships
- The platform is most successful in major metropolitan areas and focuses on entry to mid-level talent.

- The speaker believes that when companies talk about diversity challenges, they need to be more specific and identify the particular vertical of diversity they are focusing on.
- Companies that are intentional and willing to have uncomfortable conversations about diversity tend to do the best.
- It is important for companies to clearly articulate why diversity is important to their organization and how it leads to bottom line success.
- The speaker emphasizes the need for a mixture of people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexual orientations in order to foster innovation.
- Companies should frame their diversity efforts as a business imperative and recognize that the demographics of America are shifting.
- Companies should be vocal about their need for assistance with diversity challenges and be open to working with organizations like Joppa to attract diverse talent.
- The speaker challenges the notion that there is a lack of diverse talent in the pipeline and argues that companies should also focus on diversifying non-technical roles within their organizations.
- Joppa only works with companies that already believe in the value of diversity, so they do not have to educate them on its importance.

- The speaker advises that in order to build a successful hiring platform, it is important to have a specific focus and provide a solution to a real problem that companies face.
- They emphasize the importance of being passionate about the group of individuals the platform serves and focusing on making an impact rather than solely making money.
- The speaker discusses how their platform, Jopwell, uses technology to expose candidates to opportunities they may not have realized they were qualified for, helping to diversify industries.
- Jopwell primarily focuses on entry to mid-level positions, but they are open to evolving and personalizing the platform for different stages of a person's career.
- The speaker acknowledges their responsibility to speak about diversity and the challenges faced by black founders in the fundraising process, as part of their role as CEO of Jopwell.
- They share a personal experience of facing skepticism from a prominent VC during a pitch, but using their deep knowledge and expertise to turn the conversation around and secure an investment.

- The speaker discusses their experience as a black founder in a room where no one looks like them, but emphasizes the unique perspective and expertise they bring to the table.
- They highlight the value of going through YC (Y Combinator) and how it has helped them refine their vision and receive guidance on future challenges.
- The speaker emphasizes that funding is an outcome of building a good business, and advises focusing on building a strong business rather than solely seeking investment.
- They also discuss the importance of focusing on company culture and the challenges of transitioning from a small team to a larger one.
- The speaker mentions their learning process, which includes reading books, seeking feedback from employees, and having coffee sessions with different team members.
- They emphasize the need for humility and the willingness to learn from others.

Jopwell is a career advancement platform for underrepresented students and professionals. It was created to address the lack of diversity in companies and connect employers with diverse talent. The platform has gained traction and aims to be a referral platform for underrepresented employees in tech and finance. The speaker emphasizes the importance of companies being specific about their diversity challenges and articulating why diversity is important for bottom line success. They also discuss the need for a mixture of people from different backgrounds to foster innovation. Jopwell focuses on entry to mid-level positions and uses technology to expose candidates to opportunities. The speaker shares their experience as a black founder and advises focusing on building a strong business rather than solely seeking investment. They highlight the importance of company culture and the willingness to learn from others.

Porter Braswell - https://twitter.com/Porter_Braswell - is the CEO and cofounder of Jopwell (YC S15) - https://www.jopwell.com/

Jopwell is a career advancement platform for Black, Latinx, and Native American students and professionals.

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - https://twitter.com/craigcannon

Maybe the best place to start would be, let's explain what Jopwell is and then we can kind of go back in time and get to where we are now.

So Jopwell is a career advancement platform built specifically for black, Latinx and Native American students and professionals.

And we basically allow companies to diversify their applicant funnels before they hire the best people for the job.

We got really frustrated when companies would say, we can't find this talent.

And for us, me being a part of the community, it was kind of like, B.S.

And there are 44 million black, Latino, Hispanic, and Native American students and professionals in the workforce that exist as well.

And so we wanted to create a platform so companies can no longer say, oh, this is like a pipeline issue.

And what made this problem obvious to you when you were at Goldman?

And it actually goes back to kind of where I'm from and kind of how I grew up.

And he was the first person in his family to go to college and work in corporate America.

He became a general counsel for a publicly traded utility company.

And so I grew up in the type of household where to be successful, and I put air quotes around that, you have to be a doctor, you have to be a lawyer, you can go into finance and that's it.

And I felt this large responsibility to kind of move the family forward as my dad did.

And it was kind of like this thing that I grew up in this middle-class family where that was like a responsibility that my sister and I both felt.

And so when I was in high school, Morgan Stanley was offering a diversity internship program.

Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, this is like that finance industry, you should pay attention to it.

And I got lucky, I applied, I got the internship and I started working there my junior, senior summers in high school.

Went on to college, went to Yale, played basketball there.

And instead of playing basketball in the summers, I continued in a really early access pipeline focused around diversity recruiting.

And I spent 3 summers interning at Goldman Sachs.

And I was there for 3 years buying and selling currencies.

And so while my background was getting early access, really starting when I was about 15 or 16 years old, and I found my way into buying and selling currencies, I recognized how unusual my path was, how fortunate my path was, and it struck me that despite me finding my way to my seat, I knew that a lot of other people weren't finding their way to a similar seat.

And I kind of looked around and realized that it wasn't just a finance challenge when it comes to recruitment of people of color, it was really all industries.

And at that time, the summer of 2014, right before I left, all the tech companies came out with these stats of the lack of diversity, which is something we all knew.

But it was the first time it became really a national conversation.

And so my co-founder and I decided that we can make a solution for this.

We can build a platform of people of color And we can leverage technology to directly connect them with opportunities that historically we haven't been exposed to and Create that authentic connection between the employers and potential employees And so that that was really how we started it We wanted to make impact And as a result of that impact, we also wanted to be able to build a profitable, successful business on top of it.

So we set out from the start to build it as a for-profit entity and not a nonprofit, which there are many amazing nonprofits that focus on diversity recruitment.

But we just took their approach to leverage technology, do it at scale, and solve a problem.

You know, going back to the whole YC mantra stuff.

Like, you know, so you're trading currency.

What gives you the idea that like you're going to build this recruiting platform?

I am to this day still probably the least technical person at Jopwell.

I was a political science major in college.

0 tech bones in my body, but I lived through this.

I'm passionate about diversity recruiting.

I'm very intimately interwoven within all of the stuff that kind of goes on within recruiting and so I from experience knew that this was like a major problem and I knew that technology can can help solve it.

And even though I didn't know, I wasn't thinking through the code of what that would look like, I had a platform in mind of what it could be.

So how did you test it out in the beginning?

Or did you wait until you had something built before you started?

Yeah, so basically what ended up happening for me is that after my second year at Goldman, my cousin passed away.

And for me, when that happened, it was kind of like the first, I've had plenty of people that I've known that have passed in different settings, whether it's my parents, friends, or neighbors, or whatever the case may be.

But this was the first time that somebody that I would consider, not only family, but a close friend passed.

And given that he wasn't much older than me, it dawned on me that you can die at any time.

And it was a true awakening for me to really figure out what the hell I want to do with my life.

And So after my second year, I decided that I'm gonna go on this journey to figure out what do I wanna do.

And I felt that given that I had an opportunity to play basketball at Yale and had this amazing network at Goldman Sachs, I had a responsibility to leverage that for impact.

And I didn't know what that impact was gonna come in the form of or the shape of.

But when I kind of took a step back and after a year of kind of going through this thought exercise around challenges I see in the world, what I'm passionate about, what my experiences have been, it all kind of tied to diversity recruiting and providing opportunities for others through leveraging my personal networks.

And so I told my parents at the time that I'm going to quit and build this company.

And they said, okay, let me get this straight.

And that's going to be the company you start.

I was like, that's exactly what I'm gonna do.

you're saying this to fairly conservative parents who are like, you have 3 options in life.

They were like, you're literally going to die if you try to do that.

And that was a really frightening thing to have my parents say that to me.

If you really look up to your parents and you respect them and you view them as like your role models, it's really not a natural thing to kind of go against what they're telling you is a really bad idea.

But in terms of testing this out, I never really tested it out because I lived through it.

And I intimately understood what the pain points were.

So, you know, ignorance is bliss to some degree.

And so I had this vision of like, of course this is gonna work out.

And I was so focused on doing my job really well when I was at Goldman that I didn't have the time to try to build a business on the side.

I wanted to give 110% to what I was doing.

And when the time was right to leave, then to give 110% to that.

And so, you know, it wasn't probably a wise thing to do, but definitely took a leap of faith and said, this has to work.

I mean, I mean, just being in a large company, even, I mean, now it's more obvious, but even a few years ago, it was obvious that these companies really care and people like yourself want those jobs, so why not match them together?

So going back to me being non-technical, it actually really helped.

Because when you're building this two-sided thing, and I didn't come to find this out that this was a challenge until probably when we were going through funding for our seed round during demo day, that you have to pick a side first.

At the time, there was no choice because we couldn't build a platform for users because I couldn't build anything.

So all I could do is make a pitch deck because that's what I was really good at being an analyst at Goldman Sachs.

So I just set out to make a deck and I made this deck along with Ryan, my co-founder, and we just showed it to companies and said, this is what we're gonna build, and if we build this, will you be a customer?

And so we got really fortunate that when we made these phone calls, people answered, They took our meetings, they took the deck seriously, and they said, sure, if you build this, we'll definitely be a customer, because what you're trying to solve for is a real pain point of ours.

And we took a couple of very flimsy yeses as, yes, we have customers.

And then from that, we were able to raise a little bit of money, hire some people, built the platform, got the other side.

So the July 3rd, 2014 was my last day at Goldman Sachs.

September, let's call it September 1st was when we kind of set out to make this pitch deck to show to companies.

Let's say by the end of September, we had about 3 or 4 soft yes, sure, when you build that, let us know, maybe we'll be a customer.

But for us, that was like, okay, they're gonna be a customer.

And we had them sign this 1 page letter of intent that says if you build it, we'll partner with you.

And then once we had that, by October, We decided, okay, we have customers, we need a platform, we have to raise money, and we need to hire people who can build it.

And so we got very fortunate that people invested in Ryan and me, and we were able to raise $500,000 with family, friends, networks, within a course of about a month and a half.

It's something that we didn't foresee happening.

We thought it was gonna take a year, but what ended up happening is that going back to, you know, like the networks that we were able to build, people invested in Ryan and me.

And it was great to kind of go back to places and tell them what we were doing with people that have known us in the past and they were so supportive.

And then it started kind of, as we all know, when you don't need capital, you start to get the capital.

So once we started getting our first few checks, it was downhill from there.

And then so now in November or so, we hired our first engineer, person I went to high school with.

And so now we had a team of 3 and we also hired another individual who I went to high school with.

With 1 engineer, 3 non-technical, 1 engineer.

And now this is in, call it November, December, we built the MVP.

Yeah, so side note, were you in any way experienced vetting engineers?

I went back to my high school 50th reunion for their first black student.

And we were kind of, you know, networking with 1 another.

And Randy Brown was standing next to me, a person that was a couple years younger than me in high school.

He's like, well, just graduated college and I'm still working on my thesis.

I was a computer science major in college and so I'm kind of playing out my thesis full time now, but it's not really going that well and I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do." And, well, we just raised a little bit of money and we're looking for an engineer.

And so, you know, I think that's the story of a lot of people where you just hire your closest friends

And it also ties into our first 4 people were African-American.

And the reason why I even bring that up is because you'll have a lot of small companies that their first 4 employees are white males and it grows from there.

And so in our DNA, we started out as an incredibly diverse, actually not diverse because we were all the same, similar backgrounds and ethnicities.

And so we have to grow out of that and you have to be you have to be really intentional about growing out of that Yeah, but as you hire your friends and for friends friends, and that's how companies scale.

So when we think about like the Difficulties of how companies kind of get to where they are where there's a lack of diversity We experienced it from a very extreme other side of things.

It's just like, hire your friend, go from there.

But you have to be intentional about it and you have to be aware of it.

So then you apply to YC for the winner batch?

we then actually applied to New York Techstars and did not get in.

They basically said, I don't understand diversity.

Recruiting is not a big challenge And you guys don't have anything.

Like, I don't know why you think this would be a good idea.

We then launched the platform in January.

Users came onto the platform rather seamlessly.

We had those companies that said that they would be there.

Started getting a lot of traction, a lot of users, a lot more companies, And it kicked off really quickly.

And then, so around March or so, applied to YC for their summer session.

Good thing we didn't get in the rest of the system.

So good thing that, you know, you have these setbacks and you get so excited about these accelerator programs and it becomes this distraction.

And it was so fortunate that we didn't get in.

But then 6 months later, $4 million later, we're in YC.

Yeah, you're still here, you're still alive, the company exists.

So just so I understand from the supply side, these people, these underrepresented employees in tech and finance, it's all across industries, right?

They're still applying to these companies, right?

So why are they looking for a platform like JobWell versus just applying LinkedIn or

So the way that we like to think about it is that many, many people when they are applying for roles or opportunities, you generally know somebody.

There's some attraction to that organization.

And for people of color, if you look at the numbers in tech, for instance, if 2% of your workforce is black and 3% are Latino or Hispanic, odds are you don't know anybody that works there.

And odds are you're not gonna have that champion that kinda says, hey guys, I'm looking out for this person, make sure you screen this candidate.

And so what we want to do and what we want to be is the referral at scale for our community.

So if Joppa will partners with these organizations, we want to be your foot in the door and that entity that becomes your referral, if you will.

And so when users on Jopwell are saying, why don't I just apply?

You can and you should, but you're gonna go into a black box unless you know somebody.

And when you apply on Jopwell, really what that means is that you're applying to companies that truly value diversity because they are partnering and paying Jopwell to have access to this community.

And when you apply through our technology, we can flag candidates to companies.

And so we can ensure that they have a more diversified pipeline.

Now, we can't ensure you want to get a job.

We can't, we don't know the candidates on our platform.

On that 1 to 1 level, we have, we have, we are fortunate that we have a large community

anybody can sign up but we're very direct and who the platform is built for it's built for black Latino Hispanic Native Americans and so that's what the community has grown to be just that and so when candidates when candidates are applying and when we let the companies that work with Joppa will know, hey, you had a thousand people apply for this 1 role or you had 30 people apply for this 1 role.

Now they can ensure that they have a more diversified pipeline because they have Joppa candidates in their funnel along with other candidates.

And now we can at least make sure that before they hire the best person for the job, that they have a diverse applicant pool.

So we had 1 question from Twitter about the pipeline in particular.

Where are people coming from that are signing up for Jopwell?

So we've been incredibly fortunate that the community has really accepted what we're trying to achieve We fundamentally believe and and truly understand that we can't be successful unless we have the support of the community Yeah, we were we're a product of the community.

And it's largely been through word of mouth.

Joppa being incredibly involved with various activations and clubs and organizations and forming really strategic partnerships and really being the solution at scale that a lot of smaller organizations haven't been able to really focus on.

They focus on a lot of coaching, training, mentoring, which is so important.

And for us, we just took a different approach that we wanted to do it at scale and leverage technology to connect people to opportunities, but formalize relationships with all these amazing organizations that are doing such amazing work, right.

To figure out a way to both help them and for them to help us.

And so a large part of our growth on the community side of the platform has been a result of the community, really leveraging Jopwell.

And regionally, you said they're East coast, west coast for the most part?

The major metropolitan areas is really where we do the best.

We tend to focus most of our employers to be within major metropolitan areas.

A lot of our user base comes from those similar surrounding areas.

And then on the second part of the question from Twitter was about, are there certain roles that maybe differ from the average in terms of job well candidates getting and doing well in?

I would say all across the board, the candidates do really well in terms of the types of roles, whether it's in finance or tech or consulting or sports.

But what I would say is that what we do really well in is call it people within their 20 or 30 somethings within their age range.

And so really that entry level to mid-level talent is where we thrive the most.

We do have people that we would consider executives on the platform, but it's less of a sweet spot for what we do.

So if you are typically, you know, in college or call it sub 12 years or so in the workforce, that's kind of where we operate the most.

And so in terms of the industry as a whole, you guys are I mean, obviously this diversity conversation, super important and only more talked about in the past couple of years since you guys have been around and you're 10 years.

What have you noticed in terms of changes in the industry and where do you see it going from here?

So the first thing, and it's more of a frustration, but when I hear the word diversity and I hear people describe diversity challenges, I think that, 1, when I hear that, I don't really hear much because that diversity, it could be anything.

You can make an argument that anybody is diverse and that really, I think, inhibits companies from actually moving the needle when it comes to what their actual challenges are.

So if you're looking across corporate America, and the reason why Joppa is built for black, Latino, Hispanic, and Native Americans, it's because it's the most underrepresented groups within corporate America.

And so companies that have a really difficult time connecting with this audience, they should just say that and not just say we have a diversity challenge.

They need to be able to truly identify what diversity challenge, like what vertical of diversity are you kind of focusing on?

And then you can find solutions for that particular thing.

And so I think the companies that are the most intentional and are willing to have the most uncomfortable conversations are the ones that do the best.

And they need to be able to clearly articulate to their organization about why diversity or a particular subset of people within the diversity umbrella is so important to that organization.

It's been proven time and time again now through multiple studies, McKinsey has come out with a couple of studies, BCG, around having a more diverse workforce leads to bottom line success.

And if you're trying to build a world-class organization and you're trying to invent products that are gonna change the world, how can you do that without people at the table who have differing backgrounds and experiences and opinions?

And by the nature of being a person of color, I'm going to experience the world differently than maybe my white peer.

And so even using me as an example where yes, I had a fabulous opportunity to go to Yale.

But at the end of the day, I'm a black male in this country.

And when I'm outside and I'm engaging with people, I don't have a Yale tattoo slapped on my forehead.

People first identify, and as I first identify, as a black male, and so therefore, I am seeing the world through a different lens, I'm experiencing the world through a different lens.

Even if I had a white counterpart that also went to Yale, we're still gonna experience the world in a different lens.

So when I come to the table and I'm giving you my experiences and my background and my opinions, just being a person of color in America, I'm going to have a different thought than what you might come to the table with.

And that's important and that leads to innovation.

And so it's so important that companies have a mixture of people from different backgrounds, ethnicity, sexual orientations, you name it, you need that, that you need that tension, that those conversations to occur, because that's where innovation happens.

Yeah, so I agree with you, but the, what I'm trying to figure out is you say, okay, diversity, saying broad, like, we want a diverse workplace, like to you, it's just like, nah, noise for the most part.

So how do you be specific and inclusive of those people without being by default, exclusive of other people?

So I think that's something that a lot of companies feel that they, again, it's going back to that uncomfortable conversation.

They're like, oh, shit, I didn't want to offend that person by trying to include this person, whatever.

Absolutely, I think so long as companies frame it within the organization itself as, we're doing this because it makes business sense.

And stick to like, this leads to bottom line success for this company if we diversify and we really start to attract candidates from different backgrounds that we haven't recruited from in the past, we need that in order to stay relevant.

By 2040, the people of color in this country are going to be the majority for the first time.

So if you can't build for the future, you're going to get passed.

And it's such a business imperative conversation that if you keep it at the business level, I think it becomes less of an awkward conversation and less so of, oh, we can't bring this group of people in we can only focus on this.

It's like no We're trying to be the best organization possible.

we don't have a lot of representation We need more representation from these groups within America We don't look like what the broader American society looks like and what it's shifting to be Yeah So we need to double down and triple down on those efforts.

And I think that if you can have that conversation and keep it at the business level, then it becomes less uncomfortable.

I guess the question that I'm asking is like on the positioning side, so like outwardly facing, how do you best deal with that to attract the most like the most different kinds of candidates to make your company better?

So, you know, like work with Joppa, right?

But I think the more important thing is recognizing that you're struggling in a particular area.

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Funding Is an Outcome of Building a Good Business - Porter Braswell of Jopwell