Fair HQ

PROBLEM: Our society is more diverse than ever, but our companies  are not. 87% companies recognize they want to improve D&I, yet vast majority of them are spending money on things that don't work. Example: US companies only spend $8bill a year on diversity training that doesn't improve level of D&I in their businesses. 

SOLUTION: We're building and an evidence based international standard and benchmark for diversity and inclusion, imagine sophisticated B Corp for D&I. Our technology will help companies audit, measure and improve their D&I. We will certify and promote companies that meet the highest standard and keep motivated those that need to improve. Our product will democratize D&I best practice that is currently accessible only through expensive consultancy services. 

POSITIVE CHANGE: We will help companies make the workplace work for everyone no matter what their background. Our aim is to impact 18,000+ businesses with 1.6mil employees by 2025. 

Our society is more diverse than ever, especially in the US and UK, yet our workplaces are not, especially when we look at the senior level. 

87% companies said they are committed to increasing diversity and inclusion in their businesses and yet vast majority of them don't succeed at implementing effective changes fast enough. Example: US companies only spend $8bill a year on diversity training that doesn't improve level of D&I in their businesses. 

So our society is still missing out on diverse talent being able to succeed in any seniority level. 

Companies without good level of D&I have 20% lower profit, 22% higher employee turnover, 53% lower return on equity, 73% less revenue from innovation and they are 70% less likely to enter new markets in the last year. So investing and improving D&I makes a business sense and shall be part of the business strategy. 

We're building and an evidence based international standard and benchmark for diversity and inclusion, imagine sophisticated B Corp for D&I. 

Our technology will help companies audit, measure and improve their D&I from multiple angles: 

1) diversity representation

2) policies, benefits, processes and the outcomes

3) employee inclusion and experience 

4) customer, supplier and investment diversity 

We will certify and promote companies that meet the highest standard and keep motivated those that need to improve. Each company will be recommended specific goals and set of templates and intervention including instructions on ho to implement them. 

Our product aim is to democratize D&I and the best practice that is currently accessible only through expensive consultancy services. 

We will serve small and medium businesses in the UK and later US that care about diversity and inclusion, but yet struggle to know where to start and what do do about improving it. Fair HQ will enable them to reach and benefit wider communities employees, customer and supplier through structured approach to diversity and inclusion. We've spoken to more than 30 businesses already and they all agreed to trial our solution. 

Businesses struggle with these 3 key problems: 

1. they are missing essential D&I data to assess the level of diversity, and mostly they don't even know what to measure and how

2. they're missing access to resources and best practice ...so they don't know how to build their D&I strategy, what to focus on first and what initiates will work best for their company ... 

3. it's hard to get budget and time allocated for D&I without a good business case for it and they struggle to make a strong case for it, even in cases when leadership is completely on board with D&I.

We will enable small and medium businesses to access to the vital information and best practice, so they can build truly diverse and inclusive workplace to work so they can hire and nurture the best talent with the focus on the underrepresented and underprivileged communities. 

Our solution is innovative in the way our approach and technology. We will finally allow SMEs to access the knowledge, benchmark and best practices when it comes to D&I without needing to pay £20,000+ to D&I consultants. 

Our product will be personalized to their size of the business and level of maturity of their D&I. We will use behavioural science and machine learning in our assessments and recommendation engines. Also we will be the first most accurate benchmark for D&I and thanks to our data we will be able to develop better D&I interventions for specific company segments. 

Our product will be a responsive web app fully accessible to people with special needs. The web app will include interactive surveys that will be adjusted based on companies profile and maturity of their D&I. There will be also dashboard with analytics to allow employer understand their D&I better. We will use machine learning in our recommendation engine, so we can recommend the best questions in the assessment, D&I strategy and  intervention. There will also be an interface for employees to report their data & experience. All GDPR compliment. 

We will use standard technology to build our custom web app - react js, node js and python. The technology ticked below will be used in our solution. 

Our target it to affect 18,000 companies with 1.6mi; employees in the next 5 years. 

The theory of change for our product: 

1. Short term - through our assessment we will enable companies to understand and benchmark their D&I 
2. Short term - that will allow them realize where they stand and where they need to improve 
3. Short term - we will recommend things for them to do to improve and help them implement the specific interventions they selected 
4. Short term - we will certify companies that are doing really well to create positive examples and peer pressure
5. Mid term - we will help them measure impact of the changes they made on their D&I through our assessment 
6. Mid term - though continues feedback and we will keep the company and their employees motivated to on their D&I
7. Mid term - By working with Fair HQ companies will create a fair and equal place to work for people from underrepresented and underprivileged backgrounds. 
8. Long term - companies will significantly improve their D&I 

0 now, by end of this year we want to serve 400 companies with 21,000 employees. 

Mostly funding so we can hire the team. 

We're raising 500,000 with VCs in the UK.

It's me Kate, Fair HQ is my 4th company. Started my career as a Head of HR (4.5 years, hired 150 employees and got us to acquihire by Silicon Valley startup), so I understand business/HR pains very well especially when it comes building global and diverse team. Last company I started SheWins.co was focused on reducing the gender pay gap while empowering women to negotiate. We had amazing clients like Sky, Spotify, Dell, PwC and Deliveroo (all inbound), but what I realized is that the diversity and inclusion will not improve if people from underrepresented groups will step in, it's a structural problem that companies need to solve so these groups of employees can fully contribute and succeed in their workplaces, so that's why I decided to start Fair HQ. 

We have an incredible advisor - Prof. Kathleen McGinn from Harvard that has been focusing on inequalities in the workplace and at home. 

I'm also fortunate to have amazing friends helping me - Majo, 10+ years experience in UX and UI, he helped to build ProductBoard from scratch (as a 1st employee) to 350Mil evaluated company. Martin - Product designer, 10+ years experience that has helped 30+ tech product from 0 to 1. 

We're also now hiring Technical lead and Behavioural scientists and are in talks with some awesome expert from Behavioural Insights team that are considering to join us. 

Not yet, we have 30+ companies that would like to trial our solution once ready.

Monthly subscription fee of £3-8/month per employee depending on the product they choose to use. 

Example: 50 people company will be pay £150-250 a month. 

We expect to become break even in about 3 years from now. Till then we will fund our business through combination of VC & angel investor money and our revenue from clients and partners and ideally through MIT solve too. ;)

My great friend Clare that started Code Club, said that applying for Solve MIT was the best idea she had and thanks to that she was able to accelerate her learnings and create wonderful partnership with corporate partners that work with Code Club till today. She also had a great access to experts you have in place and that helped her with the product road map and innovation. So when I heard this I was up for it all! 

It would be great to get access to your MIT experts in social and behavioural science and ML/AL and of course to some funding. 

Would love to get access to experts in these MIT organizations: 

• MIT behavioural research lab
• Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
• The Institute Community and Equity Office

Fair HQ will help companies create more inclusive place to work and succeed for women across all senior levels. Diverse and inclusive companies enable more women to enter employment and succeed in growing their career without facing social backlash or inequalities.