Get The Memo: Issue 5
Sojo Signal
Company Overview
Diverse employees and millennials will make up at least 75% of the workforce by 2024, yet we continuously hear horror stories from employees at companies like Google, Facebook, and Starbucks, who are rated highly for their company culture and diversity. Most companies are significantly behind and out of touch when it comes to initiatives and strategies to not only attract the incoming diverse workforce, but to also keep the employees they have. This is why Founder, Jasmin Hinnant started Sojo Signal . Sojo, short for Sojourner, a person who resides temporarily in a place, is meant to empower the diverse community of job hoppers who are told that they are the problem instead of the company culture and the structures in place. Sojo Signal is an anonymous app that helps diverse employees, job, and internship seekers gain knowledge and manage expectations to decrease turnover due to company culture. By gathering this information amongst employees, they are able to produce data to help companies make better strategic decisions to help retain diverse talent and maintain a culture that will attract employees.
Founder, Jasmin Hinnant is a former higher education professional who helped marginalized students improve their career development and transitioned into people operations focusing on talent development, retention, and diversity, equity, and inclusion at start-ups. She has managed programs, initiatives, and training focused on professional development, engagement, and DEI, both in person and virtually. This also hits close to home, as she has personal experience leaving jobs that she thought were a great fit, due to toxic company culture or lack of transparency throughout the interview process. After I signed the dotted line, I always experienced a different company than what was sold to me during the interview process and have been a victim of unfair treatment, racial, and gender bias that made me feel undervalued.” Says Hinnant.
Market, Model & Inflection Point
Sojo Signal’s B2B business model selling data and strategies to highlight employee and department pain-points. It also includes charging companies for job board ads. Their B2C strategy includes a tiered community model in which paid members receive exclusive access and company statistics.
For B2B, they sell data and strategies to mid-large company HR leaders focused on People and Culture, and who have a large user base on the platform. For B2C, their target customers are BIPOC 18–40 technologically savvy internship-seekers, jobseekers, and current employees who are interested in learning real insights about company culture from other diverse job seekers.
Sojo Signal has the opportunity to take over the current $16B HR data market. This is because $16B is lost in the tech industry alone due diverse employee turnover (Women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC) mostly because of unfair treatment in the workplace. Black and Latinx workers are 3.5x more likely to leave their jobs than their white peers due to toxic company culture. Although 80% of employees value diversity, companies struggle with racial and gender bias which decreases their innovation and ability to enter new markets. Millennials and Gen Z’s are taking over the workforce and are 3x more likely to leave jobs where they feel un-welcomed, equating to $30B dollar annual loss in the total workforce. It is time to focus on employee needs or companies will lose out on diverse talent completely.
Recent domestic events and ongoing research about diverse job seekers makes it a great time for this technology. Sojo Signal aims to first help current employees and the 19M unemployed POC and women who lost or left their jobs due to COVID-19 or the racial/political uprising after the death of George Floyd. Their goal is to create more transparency amongst diverse community experience and empower employees to speak out against inequitable companies.
The biggest hole is that I am a solo founder. I have been actively joining start-ups groups and have coffee chats to meet potential co-founders and advisors, but I haven’t found the right fit. I am looking for a business-focused co-founder as my strengths include operations and people management.
The inflection point would be if companies stopped caring about hiring and retaining diverse candidates which would mean that they would not care to generate better-than-average profits or capture new markets.
Competition
Competitors include a few small companies who are also new to the space such as Kanarys, Chezie, and Dipper. The difference is that Sojo Signal focuses on a relatable story of job hoppers and toxic workplace culture. Additionally, they offer statistics and company information on their platform instead of just focusing on the reviews. Lastly, they noticed there was an open lane for internship reviews, so they added an internship experience feature to our platform.
What will keep Sojo ahead of the competition is Jasmin’s relationships within the higher education network and her ability to tell her personal job-hopping story. She can relate to students, interns, and professionals. In addition to personal experience, Jasmin is experienced in HR and understands what HR managers need help with to increase retention. Because of Sojo’s relationships within higher education and HR, they are able to develop community and tap into new demographics.
How would you deploy capital if you would hit your next milestone?
To reach their next milestone, Sojo plans on deploying capital into full-time roles focused on building community and business development. Jasmin wants to keep building community and partnerships in hopes to reach 1k active users by the end of Q4.
What is the legacy you as a Founder want to leave?
I would like my legacy as a founder to be that I was hardworking,relatable, and truly cared about the knowledge, development, and advancement of people, specifically marginalized people of color. I hope that people notice that I care about the success and empowerment of the under-represented communities and utilized my talents to create change.
