A host of diversity technology platforms are starting to spring up and a handful are even getting funded. The latest entrant into this market is Canvas.com formerly known as Jumpstart. They recently raised a $20 million funding round, and we'll get into that with our guest, CEO Ben Herman.
What does Canvas do?
Canvas was originally Jumpstart, as you mentioned. We started in building a platform that helped college students find internships and new grad opportunities with tech and finance companies. With our success that we had over the last few years, we had a lot of demand to help experienced recruiting teams have the same success.
And over the last six months we've been working on a big rebrand, whilst changing our name, changing our mission, our vision, our values, and everything else that goes with it, to create what is a new category, which is diversity recruiting platform, DRP. And we believe just like everyone needs a CRM to have relationships with candidates, they also need a DRP to engage and hire more diverse talent. And so the platform ultimately helps them do that for a suite of tools. And we keep diversity top of mind throughout the platform.
Did you pivot at some point into what you are now?
We didn't pivot, we did stumble across what was the solution that we offer today. And that started by helping companies who received sheer amounts of inbound applicants that they otherwise ignored. And we asked many questions around that, to be like, but these people have put their hand up to say they're interested and you don't want to give them an opportunity? And they just said, we simply can't get through them. And we have no way to identify if they match or if they're relevant. And instead we want to proactively work with different organizations and source more relevant, more diverse talent.
And so we said, what about if we could help you to do that through our platform? And so we did this in a beta version with Lyft, the transportation company, and we had great success. And so we built the relevant integrations, the relevant product to enable this to happen, what is now more automatically.
Was it a challenge getting the Canvas.com domain?
I think any “dictionary.com” is a challenge, period. I've been a geek of domain since I was about 21 years of age, should I say? And so I have a lot of great contacts who also have been in that industry for a very long time. And lo and behold, one of my friends who I was introduced to a year or two ago, held this domain with many others and we were able to strike a great deal.
Could you say buying the domain was a six-figure purchase?
Yes, it was ... Yes.
A domain like that just brings instant credibility to any business.
Yeah. That was our goal. So I appreciate the kind words. Trust is probably one of the most important things in the industry that we operate, right? People's careers are very important, not just to them, but also to us. And we don't believe that our name and domain reflected our vision and our brand awareness and trust that we had built.
And so that was really the core component of this, was how do we build trust? How do we have a name and a brand that enables us to build something as big as our vision? And so that was really the core component behind it.
Advice you could offer other startups in terms of buying a domain like that?
Yeah. Network with the people who were in and around the dotcom boom from the 90s, it's really helpful. But more than that is, I think when you start a company, the best advice that you could get is spend more time on the brand, the name, the mission, the vision. I think that stuff is actually more important than the idea itself.
So can you explain the product more, and the user experience? What are you buying here? How do the recruiters use it?
Yeah, of course. We're a two-sided marketplace, so we have two customers. On one side it's candidates, candidates who are students as well as people with up to 20 years of experience. So it's open to all candidates who really are interested in finding a job in tech or finance.
And then on the other side of the marketplace it's companies. And the general user of a company could be a recruiter, a coordinator, a hiring manager, a DNI leader, an exec, et cetera. It really depends on what involvement they have in recruiting.
And the solution that we provide to both sides of that marketplace is really about leveling the playing field and creating accessibility, for both companies, and candidates. And so when you think about the other solutions out there, it's more about how do you make the job more efficient for recruiters to reach out to talent, whether that's on LinkedIn, or manage talent, like through the ATS or CRMs.
But having spent 10 years in recruiting myself prior to starting this company, I feel like the problem is much deeper than that. And the problem comes more from, there's this form of a war of talent, where companies are competing for people, and ultimately trying to hire them. And largely that's built on the basis of, there's not enough talent. But I believe if talent was more accessible to companies, that war of talent wouldn't exist.
And I think for far too long, it's been this competition, or war. And I don't think that people are a commodity that should be in a war. Instead, I think it's about companies coming together to complete the diversity data gaps that exist and giving more accessibility to those companies. And so, however we can help candidates get information, learn about processes, interviews, companies, through other candidates experiences, that happens.
And then on the company side, talent isn't relevant for all companies. They reject a lot. And however we can help recycle or reflow that talent to other companies to give them more opportunities is what we focus on. So it's really about accessibility.
So an employer could go on there and source candidates today based on different filters, is that part of it?
Yeah. So in terms of the features, if we're going into that, we really offer three core components, which is about engaging. Which is managing your events and talent communities in our platform. Then it's sourcing, and that's sourcing through your inbound applicants automatically with our technology. Or accessing the shared talent pool, which is people that have applied everywhere else outside of your company. And that's plan matches, array of filters, saving searches, et cetera.
And then the ability to understand. And to understand is really analytics that are end to end probably the most comprehensive in the industry, thinking more like the tableau of data.
Can you post jobs as well?
Yeah, you can post jobs. But we're not really a job board, we're more about managing the people who come to that job and automating that process.
Give us a sense of the pricing model.
Yeah. It's an annual subscription that companies pay, and it's based off of two things. One is what do you want access to, and how many seats do you want to buy? So the more seats, the better the price per seat. And depending on what you want access to from the engage, the source, and the understand part is dependent on the price.
What comes to mind when you think about how successful your clients are on the platform?
It's about the ability to ultimately hire underrepresented groups. That's really what we care about. But that comes in many different ways through many different channels. It's events, communities, sourcing, inbound, et cetera. We really want to help them to understand that the full array of talent, where they come from regardless.
Where is the company headquarted?
We're a remote first company. People all around the country. But predominantly we started in LA, and then we moved to San Francisco. So a large percentage of the firm are in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
So what are your plans for the new funding round? Are you going to be hiring a lot, expanding your marketing efforts?
We've been hiring a lot and we'll continue to be hiring. So any people looking to join a very mission-driven company, please, please check us out and please apply. We really take applicants very seriously. But in addition to that, it's really about scaling our efforts from go to market, which encompasses marketing, sales, et cetera. And building to be compatible to every single ATS that's available to a company, and ultimately thinking about new markets that we'll explore as well next year.
Do offer integrations between different ATSs for your clients?
Yeah. We have a very interesting system that's a universal ATS. So if you imagine a big, giant ATS that can connect to every other ATS. And that really is state of the art technology that we've built.
Do you use your own ATS essentially to do your own hiring? Or do you use an external provider?
We use an external provider. We actually used both Greenhouse and Lever for different reasons.
Why both?
Because we'd like to understand the workflows and be able to continuously learn and understand how the ATSs operate, as we want to partner with as many ATSs ... We partner with Workday, Jobvite, et cetera. And in our partnerships, to be able to build the best version of managing your applicants within your ATS. And so it's very, very important for us to understand how they work and how we can continuously improve that user experience for our customers.
Is there another diversity technology tool or site that you want to give a shout out to in terms of something that you think is pretty cool that helps companies hire as well?
Yeah. I mean, I appreciate what everyone's doing. To be honest with you, Chris, I don't really look at other firms as competitors because it's more about us realizing our missions together. And I think that we're different in different ways. And I really appreciate the work that TechArea does, AfroTech does, Grasshopper does. We partner with all of those.
But in addition to that, I also appreciate all of the other SAS tools do in HR and I think they all have great value that they bring to companies for different reasons.
Give me one or two tips here for employers out there to take away with in terms of just making their workforces more diverse.
Yeah. That's a big question to save to the end, but I think it's really about holding both the recruiters and the leaders accountable, right? I think for far too long, it's been a brand promise or lip service, and I think we're now entering into diversity 2.0. And where like diversity 1.0 was like, we're spending all this money to share what we're doing with these different non-profits and different conferences, and words and commitments. I think it's now about, we want to see it in your actions, right?
And so I think that you can only hold people accountable if you understand the data and that's what we're really, really focused on. And so I think, push back on your leaders, ask to see it in the data. And push back on the Ics, and ask them to look at their data. I think recruiters have a lot of power. They're able to reach out to all candidates who went to these five schools that they prefer, and worked at these two companies that they prefer. And no one can actually see that or pull them up on that, and I think it really starts with our standing together and not standing apart.