Tendo

1. We're setting out to make frontline work a dignified, safe and prosperous place to earn a living. The invisibility of frontline workers from online credentialing platforms is one missing piece to secure employment status for 3B+ low-middle income employees.

2. We have built a product to equip workers with a way to generate and retain verified records of their hours worked and skills demonstrated - a portable skills account.

3. Owning a verified record of work done improves dialogue with managers, also signposting missing training and ways to build personalised learning pathways.

The changing nature of work requires frontline workers to learn new skills on a dynamic basis - called continuous workplace learning. 

Thousands of courses are available in the U.S., with limited "next course you should do" guidance for workers who might be time poor, low-income and lacking connectivity to internet or charged devices.

Meanwhile frontline workers don't have a means of claiming recognition for their week-on-week hours and skills, for procedures that often highly repetitive.

Streamlining this "UX of learning" is one key - for course paid for my employers and also those taken independently by the candidate.

Factors relating to the problem:

• Lack of authoritative list of skills (O*NET is the best)
• Low legibility of skills from the employee perspective - still understanding their "role" not their skills
• Low willingness from employers to invest in workers (pay for training)

Tendo allows employers and employees to share a verified record of hours worked and skills demonstrated. This record is owned by the employee, who can take it it all employers, regardless or sector or country. With this increased availability of competency information, employers are able to see a single dashboard displaying skills (ability) for their entire frontline. 

We use two-way verification using a serverless React app. Both employer and employee need to approve a piece of data until it is stored on Tendo.

Low-income workers. An emphasis on building a service that also meets the needs of those in transitional stages: youth entering the workforce, refugees, previously incarcerated and long-term unemployed.

We take a bottom-up approach, treating the employee as our vital user. Industry value is built around this, not the other way around.

Full-time: 1

Part-time: 2

Hire by trial, skipping the interview and other soft social aspects that create barriers to entry.

Hiring through the userbase, typically low-income and previously disadvantaged community.

Outreach to organizations that represent minority interests (e.g BAME in Hospitality, Brick+Board (previously incarcerated))

- LinkedIn - doesn't provide two-way verification of data

- Credly - captures credentials from all (types) of employees

- Bottom-up approach to product development

- Uncompromising UX for learning - no gaps and no "submit an application to enrol" requests

The backend API is a "serverless" application running in AWS. It uses the Serverless framework (https://serverless.com) and makes use of a number of AWS services:

• Lambda. A number of Lambda functions are deployed. These contain the business logic for the backend. Functions are invoked by a number of triggers. In the case of Tendo these triggers are mostly HTTP requests from the frontend web app. The Lambda functions are written in JavaScript and run on Node.js.

• API Gateway. A routing layer that allows Lambda functions to be invoked in response to HTTP requests.

• DynamoDB. Document database used as the primary persistence layer. Stamp data is stored here.

• Cognito. Used for identity and access management. User data is stored here.

• SNS (Simple Notification Service). Used for messaging between parts of the system. For example, a request to issue a stamp results in a message being published to SNS which can then be listened for and used to trigger a different Lambda function.

Building a sustainable model for meeting skill gaps requires buy-in from frontline workers. Not until then will employers be able to pay or convince employees that new training, increased levels of loyalty or dependability are worth it from the employees perspective. Employees need to see how their career development runs in parallel to the needs of the business. 

Log at least 1000 hours of work from 1000 employees by the end of 2020.

By the end of 2025, to have positively impacted the lives of 100 million frontline workers and make getting real-time context on your job to be a normal best practice.

• Legal: ensuring compatibility with employment law in different countries
• Financial: ensuring that an enterprise-scale product can be built for multiple integrations will require Seed funding

• Take a place-based approach to distribution (country, state)
• Raise Seed funding by the end of 2020.

Previously head of software at large, UK supermarket

Recent work in frontline roles

Team cohesion - worked together for nearly two years

Bethnal Green Ventures - 6% equity investment

We charge employers on a per employee basis for access to a dynamic dashboard displaying their org's latest skills, hours and upcoming milestones. Starts at $2 per employee per month, reducing on a per-user basis to $1 per employee per month for 500+ employees.

We will raise a Seed round to build the technology to create a break-even organisation by the end of 2022. 

6% equity investment for £20k

Customer #1 - $18 per month

Initial round of funding (Pre-Seed) of up to £1m (£240k depending on enterprise deal comes through or not). 

£200k

To accelerate the distribution of skills passports to low-income workers. 

Handing employee data in a safe and trusted way will be essentially for allowing Tendo to gain currency in multiple sectors. We're talking to Walmart and Verizon.

Large enterprise organisations who have stated commitments to creating lifelong learning accounts, namely Walmart, Verizon, AT&T.