The Exchanges

Q So just to be clear, the demand side of your marketplace are good groups like the New York state government, Uber, Amex that want to recruit veterans and other, other minorities. The supply side though, how do you get all the veterans signed up?

A Great question. So the reason why, so before I started this company, I started a nonprofit for veterans, uh, called GI go fund. We're the largest veterans organization in the state of New Jersey now, but it was in that process that I learned, That when you're trying to work with the underserved populations, the way you actually capture them is by working with the communities, the organizations that are on the ground helping those communities. So a lot of times companies like Panasonic would come to me and say, we want to hire veterans, but where do we find them? The reality was they were working with my nonprofit locally, that small community group. So our thesis is if we empower all of those communities, all those same communities, whether it be Wichita, Kansas, Newark, New Jersey, Atlanta, Georgia, you name it with the same level of technology, then everybody's working off of the same platform. We capture all the users that are going to those organizations by and then ultimately provide a big marketplace for companies like Apple and Uber and Facebook to recruit from.

AI assessment note: “the way you actually capture them is by working with the communities”

Q online mentorship. I understand that. Um, I imagine though, these local folks that pay for your software would cancel if jobs aren't actually getting placed, right? So, so how do you, um, I guess the first question is how many local governments Or, or, or Amazon in the world, how many folks like this are paying to use your software right now to set up these local job, job boards?

A So we have in our network, if you look at our network of sites, we have about 25, uh, organizations that range from, you know, major, uh, nonprofits like the Bob Woodruff Foundation is one of our newest clients, uh, that's come on board. Gridiron Capital is a partner of theirs that's come on board. They all want to create their own veteran hiring programs. And again, this is an example of us Giving those organizations the technology they need to translate military experiences, right? Which is a big problem. So if you were, if we had an opportunity to talk about this, I would say that most veterans who were, they get a job code in the military called an MOS. And that's, that's your military occupational specialty. When you get out of the military, you know, that doesn't mean much to the civilian world, right? You were an ADA Mike in the military, but what's an ADA Mike mean? If you put that on your resume, it's meaningless to an employer. They don't know what it means. And you don't really know how to translate it, but the basics of it is you were a truck driver in the military. So that's very, that's very attractive to an Amazon. That's very attractive to a FedEx. It's very attractive to a company that all has trucking shortages and driving shortages, but don't have the ability to connect with those users. So by giving those employers the ability, this is exactly what we're doi…

AI assessment note: “we have about 25, uh, organizations that range from, you know, major, uh, nonprofits”

Q The question is, how do you measure the success rate? You, you go back and you sort of use a, I would say a fluffy term, which is empowered, but what's the number there actually? If, if the New York state government wants to hire 300 vets last month, how many of them did you help fill?

A So let me be very clear on what our, what our objective is as a company. And I think this is getting lost in this interview. The objective of the company is to provide those community organizations with the software to, to run their programs. I'm not responsible for what they do with them after that. We just want to give them the tools Like resume building, job training, access to community resources, local organizations and nonprofits to help with mental health. Providing them the resources to do so is how we gauge our successes. Our goals are not necessarily on the total number of people that are hired in each one of those local communities. Our goals are to connect the employers with those communities in a way that's never happened before. Those local communities have never had technology to connect with employers ever before. There was never a way for them to do so. The old way of doing things was a company like Amazon would send an email to a nonprofit and say, hey, we have a job opening. Can you please distribute this to your, to your distribution list? That way doesn't work. Now we've built out technologies.

AI assessment note: “Providing them the resources to do so is how we gauge our successes.”

Q Are you still allowing and doing, doing custom build work or you've shut off that revenue line completely?

A We're still doing it. So like a major city, for instance, more than likely is not going to want to build their own site. They're going to want us to build it for them. So that product is still available. But if a local nonprofit, a small group like my nonprofit was, when we first started, we didn't have that kind of money. We never would have been able to sign up for this product when we got started. But if it was 500 or 700 hours a month, something like that, I would be able to, to build it in because it would be of enough value because so many of these organizations, again, They use this software to go get grants. They use this software to qualify for federal grants. They use this software, uh, to get funding from different partners. That's how we gauge our success is how our partners are succeeding. Um, and when they're succeeding using our software, we know that they're getting people placed. We know that they're getting people trained. Uh, and we know that they're staying with us. They're not going anywhere.

AI assessment note: “We're still doing it. So like a major city, for instance”

Q Okay, so how many veterans today have active profiles on job paths?

A So we had 24,000 new users every single month. We have 200,000 active job seekers in the system. Uh, and it's not just veterans anymore. Now we've, we've expanded to individual disabilities and the formerly incarcerated and others that they're looking for, for additional services to help them find jobs. Uh, but a really robust platform, uh, the largest D and I platform in the country by, by far. And it comes from the network itself by providing front doors as we, as we see it front doors into our platform, uh, on the, on the ground level and the grassroots and the community level. Uh, we ultimately build a large platform and capture those, those, those users that have been, um, hard to find over the years.

AI assessment note: “We have 200,000 active job seekers in the system. Uh, and it's not just veterans”

Q I, I, you've literally, I, I understand what you do. I think my audience does too. I, I'm, I'm a little confused why you keep, you keep repeating the same thing. We understand it. There's 25 now of these installed. I want, I'd love to understand. I mean, this seems like a great mission. How do you go from 25 to a thousand, right? How do you grow?

A Great question. That's exactly what we're, we wanted to talk about. So, In the original way of building this system out, it would take us about two, three months to build out a system for somebody. It would take us a while to get to the point where we were, you know, comfortable with this being a customized system. It would take a lot of dev time for us to build out each individual system. The sales process took over 12 months. It was very complicated. Uh, but the reality of it is we built over the last two or three years, we spent a lot of money, invested a lot of money into the business to focus on scalability. Say that again.

AI assessment note: “invested a lot of money into the business to focus on scalability”