WhereWeGo

People still don't know where to go to discover skills training. Built by award-winning educators on the front lines of this problem, WhereWeGo drives towards one key metric: Help the many people who are ready to work start the many programs ready to train. WhereWeGo's training navigator is better, deeper, and fresher because it doesn't web crawl or automate a market that changes week to week. Designed by teachers, trainers, and career seekers, WhereWeGo gains faster outcomes. Since WhereWeGo's launch during the pandemic, over 4,000 people have discovered, compared, and connected to local training programs for high-wage, high-demand careers. 

We envision every city and county has WhereWeGo, leading to more qualified workers in healthcare, technology, media, skilled trades, business services, and other industries craving a healthier talent pipeline. A city that contracts with WhereWeGo breaks down old information barriers that remain persistently harmful to financial freedom in the U.S. https://www.wherewego.org 

WhereWeGo is solving awareness, perception, and accessibility barriers to participation in high quality training. Every single user tested had not heard of 80% or more of our local programs, though they were actively looking. Top-tier counselors say, "Even I use WhereWeGo to stay informed about what's out there." With over 100,000 middle skills training programs nationally that may change week to week, knowing what pathways even exist remains a struggle for all stakeholders. 

Our better data and design flips perceptions about "dirty, dumb, or dangerous" pathways. WhereWeGo's users are typically 18-30 yrs old, with some college and no degree (like 36M Americans), and household incomes under $50k (like 37% of Americans). When people arrive on WhereWeGo, they discover qualitative info about fast (71% take 12 months or less), affordable (86% are free with aid), and higher earning (65% earn more than median income) opportunities in their own backyard.

At at time of record lows in labor force participation, record highs of new claims of unemployment, ballooning student debt, and middle skills gaps in every U.S. state, WhereWeGo is creating connections between people ready to work and programs ready to train in about 9 minutes, all on their phone.

WhereWeGo aggregates better data on regional (city or county) training programs to launch in a region in under 30 days, and then audits, maintains, and markets the platform to remain relevant all year round. A recent partner (and Board Member of NAWDP) said "I'm so glad you're tackling how to create an training program inventory for the people that doesn't just expire in 3 months. For us, it's a no-brainer."

First, we partner with a workforce board to map regional opportunities.We chart the ecosystem together to half-fill the WhereWeGo database with pages for programs to claim. This SQL relational database is the backbone of the highly engaging, mobile-first "program profiles" that populate the platform. These include on-the-job trainings in local industry, apprenticeships for high-demand upcoming public works, healthcare pathways for worker shortages, and regional boot camps, community college pathways, etc. 

Then, our programs access their dashboard with valuable rewards like responding to profile feedback, prospective applicants, and integrations. For the sake of our users, WhereWeGo audits once every 90 days to maintain our standards of data integrity and programs update their profiles year-round.

Finally, we promote to create an ecosystem that is engaged and taking action all hours of the day.

WhereWeGo's target population is unemployed/underemployed/dislocated workers and out-of-school youth. Our most common user is a woman of color, aged 22-26, with some college and no degree, and a household income <$50,000. 

WhereWeGo spent 18 months gathering survey, focus group, and written research and partnerships to find answers about postsecondary barriers. We gained findings such as: 

• awareness, perception are #1 barriers
• lifestyle fit drives decisions more than specific career,
• avoid career quizzes and web crawling, 
• programs want a platform,
• ways to make discovery pleasing, actionable, and in-touch.

Over 150 low-income 17-40 year olds, educators, and training providers have their mark on WhereWeGo. 

To remain in touch, we remain partners with CBOs and also provide free career counseling sessions with 1-3 users/week. These sessions' primary focus is to help others in our community while we have the capacity to do so. However, they also serve as our (currently) most valuable touchpoint of our user's experiences.

To maintain human-centered design practices in new regions, our Directors of Partnerships will form relationships that increase engagement and adoption. By cutting hard-to-harvest data out of the equation, our competitors miss something big- People want detailed, friendly, elegant, and regionally specific information on programs: https://explore.wherewego.org/... 

Most people start a training program because they heard about it through word-of-mouth or an event. Without WhereWeGo, this makes sense. Even a Google search brings the least promising opportunities (low grad rates, low returns, high costs) to the top. Equity of access demands information. 

In our research, we uncovered two key tenets of impact: When people have clarity about choices, they are more committed to their decision. When people enter a program with this information, completion rates soar. This pattern of clarity-commitment-completion not only narrows opportunity gaps, it can eliminate them, regardless of socio-economic background and prior academic preparation. 

4 people directly work on our team. We are 50% women-owned.

Leah Lykins, COO & co-founder. (background: college & career readiness)

Ben Ifshin, CEO & co-founder. (background: digital marketing for education)

Nina Horne, software development.

Max Davison, database specialist. 

David Evans is our Chief Technical Advisor. He has over 30 years of entrepreneurship experience as a CTO and CEO for tech platforms. 

E-We work with phenomenal people and organizations. WhereWeGo partners with Beloved Community to conduct DEI audits and create the tools required to accurately measure equity across over 150 customized indicators. Big shout out to Beloved!

I-To be purposeful about our company's DNA, WhereWeGo works with our mentor, Krystal Allen of Krystal Allen Consulting, to craft company policy and experiences that foster a truly inclusive environment. Big shout out to Krystal! 

D-From the makeup of our team, to our vendors, to our users, we set goals for how we are growing in a way that keeps DEI at the heart of everything we do. We set and measure targets for our staff, our contractors, and our services to ensure we represent our community's diverse racial, gender, socioeconomic, and LGBTQ+ identities. We do this because we believe that WhereWeGo is only worth building if we build it with our community.

Consider this analogy: If you need a car -an affordable, long-lasting car-you don't say "I'd like a Honda" and then stop. Most people compare, shop, test drive real cars, read reviews, talk to a dealer, etc.

Our competitors are the equivalent of a long list of car models with no context or a "which car are you?" quiz that doesn't lead to action.

Like Carvana or an excellent car buying app, WhereWeGo's users shop for all the specs of their future and determine if it fits with their lifestyle. Users discover, compare, and connect to real middle-skills pathways in minutes. This isn't possible without involving programs and local workforce.

ETPLs: Traffic dead-ends, confusing, desktop only. Like a list of every car in Louisiana, running or not.

Headed2 - For kids, with help. The equivalent of the "which car are you?" approach.

Naviance, Overgrad - For 4-year college. Neglect the skills training market because automating Federal data to get skills training info isn't working. 

FindSomethingNew, SkillUP - Web crawlers, no new content, comparison, or connections. No workforce dev/program manager arm. 

On WhereWeGo, a program can be set up and recruiting all year round in the time it takes them to set up their table at the career fair. Any worker can go from "I don't know where to start" to applying to a program, alone. A workforce development region can bring workers into their funnel to gain more services. A caseworker/counselor can stay engaged with their caseload and the regional opportunities. 

WhereWeGo's platform utilizes .Net Core and Angular Universal to deliver our clients' content while the great majority of our DAL resources are stored in SQL Azure. We host our platform using Azure Services so it can be quickly scaled up or scaled out as needed while also leveraging third-party resources such as Cloudinary for image management and MailChimp for communications.

Our solution is primarily our business model and process. 

We are business to government. When a region chooses WhereWeGo they gain the entire platform en masse, as do all of the local skills training programs and workers. Recruitment between the two is centralized and the workforce development region can gain information, workers to serve, and our metrics (for example: "which dislocated adult workers are eligible for W.I.O.A. funds for subsidized training?"). 

Our process is to: 

1) map the skills training programs through our new partnership(s), 

2) gain profiles hosted by those programs through our in-house content management system,

3) promote the platform to the region, and 

4) maintain workforce level data on opportunities, workers, connections, and caseloads for relevant stakeholders, and 

5) maintain data integrity and program-specific promotions by application season. 

The software of content management systems and marketplaces for discovering and comparing options are well-established. 

We've used phrases like, "Program managers can update their profiles with the ease of creating a LinkedIn profile" and "Users can shop for career skilling the same way one shops and compares AirBnB experiences." These types of phrases may be stale in today's startup world, but may still help to understand some of the underlying technology and how we're applying it to a new market!

To feel how our users are going from "I don't know where to start" to "I've applied to a skills training program I'm excited about" in 5 minutes, give https://www.wherewego.org a shot on your phone. Feel free to say hi to us in the chat!

This is our logic model. 

Impact: 

1. Over 10k WWG users per year per region enter a livable wage after training. 
2. WWG users have higher completion rates due to better clarity and commitment.
3. >20% of participating programs increase accessibility (ex: online applications, decreased barriers to entry).
4. Our workforce development regions make gains across all WIOA performance indicators and measures.

Outcomes: 

1. Programs get more, better applicants. 
2. >50% of a region's programs are actively engaged in the WWG platform. 
3. 25%+ of participating programs' number 1 source of enrollees is WhereWeGo. 

Outputs: 

• WhereWeGo Platform | The platform is mobile-first and contains a critical mass of highly-engaged programs.
• Amazing Data | Data on apprenticeships, on-the-job trainings, community college programs, and other technical degree pathways. Data includes critical metrics like cost, duration, grad rate, and certifications and rarer metrics like support services, application details, and others that are hard to discover for all stakeholders.
• Reports on Regional Trends | Behavior and data trends of users and programs to increase accessibility and communication within the local ecosystem. 
• Community Presence | Both on and off line, from mailing lists and social media followers, to career fairs and events.

Activities: 

• User acquisition 
• Data aggregation, auditing, and compliance. 
• Platform promotion & marketing. 
• Foster strategic & community partnerships
• Acquire customers
• Community involvement

Resources & Inputs:  

• Expertise in college & career readiness, digital marketing for education, relational database management, and software development. 
• Network of training providers, counselors, nonprofits, alumni support organizations, and labor & workforce dev partnerships. 
• Up-to-date data from regional training providers, APIs, and collaboration with partners and workforce board. 
• Revenue via annual contracts for regional program finder. 

WhereWeGo recently acquired a strategic partnership with a major national labor analytics organization serving many regions across the United States. This partnership has the intended aim of increasing customers for WhereWeGo.

There are 1,422 comprehensive job centers in the United States and over 500 workforce development boards. We sell WhereWeGo for annual contracts with workforce development boards so that we can impact as many users and training programs as quickly as possible. 

We are projecting the following. 

• By 2022: At least 6 Training Navigators, 2.4M Revenue, over 100,000 unemployed/low-wage workers access WWG. 
• By 2025: At least 20 Training Navigators, 8M Revenue, over 2.5M unemployed/low-wage workers have access to WWG. 

Here's how we build and scale. These parts are happening at the same time, to allow for multiple regions at a time. (A case study for a model like this is Headed2). Our primary channel for acquiring these customers is our current strategic partnership (and opportunities like MIT Solve!). 

1. Sell WWG on an annual contract basis with workforce development board representing a city or county with a middle skills gap.  
2. First 30 Days. Map the ecosystem and aggregate data to launch half-full program profiles.
3. Second 30 Days. Begin audit and "claim your page" process to build up data integrity and deploy marketing plans and promotions.
4. Maintenance. Director of Partnerships for a region spearheads workforce board relationship, collaboration, continued marketing and audit processes, and outcomes measurement. 

Financial. Sales cycles with business to government are rewarding and stable but Long, with a capital L. We need investment to carry us through this process so that we can hire sales, marketing, and extra developers to carry us through the valley that approaches. This is our greatest barrier.  

Technical. Data integrity, privacy, and security is only going to increase in importance and we'll need to ensure we are not putting any carts before the horse when it comes to scaling. We are aware of the rigor of data requirements for organizations connected to WIOA funding and have found early solutions. We must have sound privacy and security measures that scale too, which means hiring! 

Market Development. Support determining which regions are best poised to be our early adopters and how best to expand, so that we are not over-reliant on our strategic partnership. 

Market Development. This is why we're so excited about MIT Solve! We seek to collaborate with organizations that will help us penetrate new markets and develop those outside of our current scope. 

Financial. We are raising $650k of investment in this round. We raised $170 in our last (pre-product). We anticipate we will be sustainable by the end of 2021. We'll be happy to provide the names of the organizations in our deal flow upon request. We're looking for a lead investor. You can help us fill this round and join WhereWeGo's journey.

Technical. Hiring. Our values and mission guide us here, including our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

A lot!

1. What percentage of WhereWeGo users successfully completed the program to which they were enrolled, compared to non-WhereWeGo users?
2. What percentage of enrollees at each skills training program discovered the program through WhereWeGo (this is coming, it is time-bound by application cohort dates and the data-sharing agreements have just begun). 
3. How many skilled jobs were filled by WhereWeGo users? In what industries? Which industries need more of our attention? 
4. What percentage of participating programs have made marked improvements in equitable access to their programs? (ex: accessible websites, online applications, WIOA funding allocation, transparent graduation rates). 
5. What percentage of WhereWeGo users successfully accessed regional workforce development services? 
6. Much broader impact metrics, such as: What is the regional economic gain due to these prior metrics? 

75% of us were public school educators serving populations of 95%+ low-income families, primarily first-generation immigrants, black, and/or Hispanic students. Our professional lives before WhereWeGo were 100% dedicated to the mission of closing opportunity gaps in our community. This alone does not, and should not, qualify us. What does qualify us is our involvement and collaboration with our community in building solutions with and not "for." 

Before WhereWeGo was a website, it was research, testing, and community involvement with 150+ potential users, counselors in our community, CBOs, alumni networks, and workforce representatives with their experiences on the pulse of the harsh reality that people looking for higher wages face. 

The birth of WhereWeGo was from seeing how critically our systems fail to provide equitable access to information. The barriers of information sound simple, but up close their impacts are profound and unsettling, and we've been collaborating with our partners ever since to resolve these issues. 

Our community partners are driven by the same key ingredients of our mission: Build worker-first solutions to help people gain financial freedom. Some of the considerations we make, for example, are 85%+ smartphone-dependent user base, user-tested information and formats, avoid "matching" and "career quizzes," evaluate problematic "soft-skills" paradigms, prioritize "last-mile" solution to facilitate rapid connections, don't be agnostic on outcomes like earnings, duration, time, graduation rate, costs, access to grants, put pressure on training programs to decrease barriers to entry, and more. Partnership is in WWG's DNA and our community has taken great care of us.

• Our most recent strategic partnership works with workforce boards across the nation and we'd be happy to share more about it upon request. 
• Beloved Community - Equity audit & tool creation.
• Krystal Allen Consulting - DEI goals & business mentoring.
• The NET & Collegiate Academies - Schools who have partnered with us to allow for user testing & feedback with New Orleanians ages 17 to 24. 
• City of New Orleans Office of Workforce Development - We are working closely on formalizing this relationship with an annual contract for $150k for 2021 and $250k for 2022. This relationship involves becoming a part of the workforce development board, so that we may sit at the intersection of education, government, and industry. 
• LAUNCH, Trellis, NextLevelNOLA, New Orleans Career Center - Alternative skills training providers for zero cost educational attainment. For recruitment concerns, input on promotional language, and features feedback.
• YouthForce NOLA - Fiscal agent for WIOA funding and service provider to hundreds of interns from low-income backgrounds each year. 
• The New Orleans College and Career Counseling Collaborative - A community of regional counselors and career readiness experts who have caseloads of ~150-400 people each.
• NOLA High Schools - WWG is being embedded in their curriculum, at their request. 
• Job1, LA Green Corps, Cafe Reconcile, Operation Spark, Nunez Community College, Delgado Community College, etc - Training program providers who work with WhereWeGo to use our platform but also inform our processes and feedback closely.

WhereWeGo is a B2G company. Our customers are city and county offices of workforce development. Once the contract (200-400k) begins, we map the job training programs in the workforce region - this includes healthcare, tech, and anything that leads to real, high-wage, high-demand jobs. Then, we use our platform to present a searchable, up-to-date marketplace and centralized data hub. We also are closing the skills gap by running head first into the last mile problem--awareness and promotion--all through workers' mobile phones.

Here's how a Director of the Office of Workforce Development described it: "This isn't only a great opportunity for New Orleans - this type of platform could help all of Louisiana's regions. At a time with more dislocated workers, opportunity youth, and underemployed workers, being able to connect and apply directly and digitally is more important now than ever....We need to be able to help our city's workers compare these opportunities like this before they make their choices."

The simplest reason this is needed is: "There are programs and things on there that I got to learn about for the first time, so it's just so great that we have a regionally specific resource like this." The more complex reason is that our workforce isn't ready for the unfilled jobs out there due to many causes, one of which being major informational barriers that divert people away from pathways towards financial freedom and thus, regional economic growth.

We've raised $175k from angel investors and $75k from fiscal sponsorships so far. 

We just started our $650k raise. 

We have $425k in our sales pipeline. 

We expect a minimum of 5 new navigators during the year 2021, to achieve financial sustainability by 2022. Each finder means a WhereWeGo platform and partnership with a workforce development board. These 5 new navigators will fund directors of programs, sales personnel, marketing, and legal contracts for data sharing agreements with our participating training programs and more. 

Our profit margin is 30-40%. This seems like a pie-in-the-sky metric, but that's why we've chosen this B2G, build once & deploy multiple times, model. We anticipate a rate of 1.25 hires per finder and can deploy our technology multiple times at low cost. We project between 10 and 15% of our budget for the first 5 years for marketing costs. Our biggest software development expenses in 2021 are for third-party integrations with workforce systems and caseload management for those that need it.

For some background on marketing costs, it currently costs us about $2-5 per "connection." In other words, for every $5 we spend on promotion, someone connects to a skills training program in their region. (For comparison, it costs on average $560 to recruit one person for technical degrees, according to Ruffalo Noel Levitz). 

Revenue: $95k. From sources that helped us bridge the gap between our angel investments and our current raise. 20k was for consulting on career and college readiness preparation curriculum for one of our partners. $70k was for a fiscal sponsorship form the ECMC Foundation and Greater New Orleans Development Fund to fund the pilot in New Orleans (ongoing since April). $5k was for one day of software development consulting for a local startup. 

Angel Investments:

$100k - Summer 2018, SAFE, MFN clause

$75k - Winter 2019, Revenue-Based Financing agreement

$650k, convertible notes or SAFEs preferred. Hope to raise by March 1. 

At our current burn rate, our expenses are $252k for 2021.  With each new training finder, we expect a range of $75k-90k of costs for contracts ranging $200-400k per year (depending on workforce development area size). 

If we were to gain 5 more contracts, 2021 would have $720k of expenses and ~1.08M of revenue. 52% of those are variable costs (direct labor & regional marketing) and the remainder is fixed costs primarily for salaries, tech, legal, marketing, and insurance.

We've been really excited about this opportunity because of how well it aligns with WhereWeGo's model and theory of working with workforce development boards and job centers directly. 

• Market Development | Working closely with workforce development boards will help us gain market insight and access. What we offer, how we offer it, and how best to demonstrate our values with our customers are all areas we must refine over 2021. We know our region's workforce ecosystem well. It's time for us to branch out of this region and be able to scale out in a responsible way that holds us to account to our metrics of social impact. 
• WhereWeGo needs mentorship, advice, or partners related to navigating procurement processes for large-sized government contracts outside of Louisiana. 
• We need funding to carry us through the long sales cycle we're in and expect to occur in 2021.  
• We need support in legal and regulatory matters to protect data security and privacy for contracts at our scale. 

Morgridge Family Foundation, New Profit, the judges, and partners we'll be meeting along the way are directly tied into a space in which we're trying to make a big splash. We're early to market, growing well, and our early adopters are happy, but we need organizations to take a leap of faith and join us if our company is going to survive and thrive. 

Product/service distribution --> Gain access, exposure, and relationships with workforce development boards and partners that lead to customer acquisition through annual contracts. 

Funding & revenue model --> Gain investments towards our $650k raise and a lead investor. Refine our revenue model with more details about procurements for large-scale government tech contracts.

Legal & regulatory matters --> Gain expertise for developing the second and third deployment of a technology platform in line with all data privacy and security needs for our communities. Also, gain information about best practices for data sharing agreements that measure social impact outcomes.

Marketing, media, & exposure --> Gain earned media! Increase our reach and awareness beyond Louisiana!

National Association of Workforce Boards, Dept of Labor (state and Federal), National Association of State Workforce Agencies, for customer acquisition and strategic initiatives around metrics and services WhereWeGo can offer for future versions of our product. 

JFF, Lumina Foundation, RTI Institute, Achieve Partners, & National Skills Coalition, for bringing the WhereWeGo model into research, reports, and new regions. 

We will seek mission-aligned organizations to invest in WhereWeGo either through fiscal sponsorship, debt, or equity financing. Examples include, Achieve Partners, JFF Labs, AmFam Institute, WGU Labs, gener8tor, Draper Richards Kaplan, Annie E. Casey, Gates, Ballmer, The Joyce Foundation, Strada, Lumina Ventures, Siegel Family Endowment, the Morgridge Family Foundation, IBM, CSU Global, Gary Community Investments, ECMC Group, Center for Ed Reform, etc.

National Apprenticeship orgs, American Association of Community Colleges, 2U, SNHU, and other mass influencers of skills training programs. Having organizations that are well connected with chapters of training programs throughout the nation will help us accelerate meaningful program data for every region.

Since our last edits of this section, we have gained partnerships with Penn Foster and Merit America to help accelerate the quality of future region's navigators by having pre-existing, high-quality program profiles as a model for the new region's database. We do not display all national online programs (we prioritize regional opportunities, though many regions work closely with these services). Rather, we determine which of the national players are best suited to a region based on its labor analytics data (which we can source from a strategic partner).