Shtudy

Approximately 920,000 BIPOC software engineers enter the U.S. STEM job market each year. 25% of all engineering and computer science degrees belong to Black, Latinx, or Native Americans, yet they represent only 9% of the massive $16B STEM job market. Furthermore, the average tech salary ($135k) is more than the median household family income of a Black family and a Latinx family combined ($38k and $50k respectively)! Our goal is to double the number of BIPOC tech employees from 9-18% of the workforce by 2024. Our platform technically screens prospective job seekers, offers an extensive soft-skills training library, a mock interview and coaching from a F-500 recruiter. Once finished with the quiz and training, candidates are entered into our talent pool, fill out their profile and are matched with amazing jobs/companies. We are a COMPLETELY free resource for job-seekers. Shtudy has the potential to empower entire communities and save generations.

Approximately 920,000 BIPOC software engineers enter the U.S. STEM job market each year. 25% of all engineering and computer science degrees belong to Black, Latinx, or Native Americans, yet they represent only 9% of the massive $16B STEM job market. Furthermore, the average tech salary ($135k) is more than the median household family income of a Black family and a Latinx family combined ($38k and $50k respectively)! On top of this, companies want to hire top Black, Hispanic and Native American tech talent, but are failing. After moving out to Silicon Valley and conducting extensive customer discovery research, we found that the 3 core reasons for this failure are below:

1. The most innovative companies want to hire software engineering candidates of color, but struggle to source, screen and retain them.

2. Software engineering candidates of color want to work for a highly innovative tech company, but struggle to stand out to company recruiters.
3. Companies and candidates are forced to settle for biased talent sources like job boards, LinkedIn, staffing agencies, and HBCUs, which are highly competitive, unreliable and
expensive. 

In terms of how we plan to bridge the racial wealth gap tangibly, our goal is to double the number of BIPOC tech employees from 9-18% of the workforce by 2024. And as 25% of all current STEM degrees are given to BIPOC folks, we firmly believe we will be able to achieve this. The talent is already there, the issue is just that connectivity gap between a company and diverse candidates. On the first bullet, we identify that most top companies do want to hire candidates of color, but struggle to screen and retain them. To solve this, every Shtudy candidate prior to being placed in our talent pool has to pass a series of rigorous technical screening quizzes. In addition to this, we also offer soft skills and diversity training which provides candidates with tools and an understanding that significantly curbs the retention issue. Software engineering candidates of color can also struggle to stand out to company recruiters, Shudy's platform is specifically tailored to combat this issue, and was built from scratch to highlight underrepresented talent. Companies and candidates are forced to settle for biased talent sources, Shtudy keeps all irrelevant candidate information anonymous to completely unconscious bias.

Underrepresented communities (we focus on specifically Black, Latinx and Native American folks) are struggling to create wealth compared to other racial and ethnics groups, and don't have as many resources as many of those other groups. We serve people who worked hard, did the right thing and got their degree or graduated from bootcamp, but now are struggling to find work in the tech field. Larger than that, we serve the communities that we're from and ones like it. Our co-founders, CEO Geno Miller and CTO Rayvoughn Millings, grew up in DC and Brooklyn respectively and have lived first hand what being a Black man in tech is like. Coming out of a good college at the top of his class, and by all means a seemingly top candidate, Ray still struggled to find work right away. Granted he ended up being a senior developer at a F-100 company a few years later, but not every qualified Person of Color is as fortunate. 

Of the 25% of STEM degrees held by People of Color, only 36% of degree holders currently work in tech. We completely flip the script here. Our research continuously shows that by and large most companies do strongly desire to increase diversity and hire POC candidates, they really do just struggle to find, screen and retain them. As spoken about in some of our earlier answers, our platform was built by a team of people who have experienced the core issue first hand and solves the core diverse candidate pathway connectivity issues,  between great companies and diverse candidates.

4 full-time, 5 part-time, plus our consulting dev team of about 5.

This is at the core of everything we do. We were founded by two Black men, who have made it their mission to make the world a more equitable place for all. What we do as a company, our purpose and function, is to increase diversity in tech. 

We have spent years with extensive customer discovery and research, learning everything we could about how to build the best possible product. And as of two weeks ago when we officially launched, I can objectively say that we have. Companies and employees alike LOVE our unique and intuitive approach to hiring. As the Head Recruiter of Diversity at Tesla said about Shtudy’s platform, “It just makes sense!”. Similar platforms exist, but Shtudy is revolutionary in that all candidates on our platform must complete rigorous screening mechanisms. They must pass the technical screening quizzes to prove their skill, complete the mock interview to show their social skills, and only then are they matched with an interested employer. We additionally use machine learning algorithms to match employers with their dream job, and companies with their dream employee. This all-encompassing hiring process makes hiring the right candidate and finding the right job simple. We have talked to and surveyed hundreds of recruiters and tech employees alike over the last few years, their insights have helped us build a revolutionary platform that will soon make current tech hiring practices outdated by comparison.  

Our software platform is live and up at Shtudy.io. Personally checking out the detail and practicality of the platform itself can describe our core technology more than words ever could. We strongly encourage you to go check it out! 

We already have signed multiple contracts, have multiple clients and have placed candidates through our process. It works! 

Our solution is no longer theory. Our platform is out, we have paying customers and we have far more demand from companies than we can currently handle (which we are thankful for and definitely is a good problem to have). Much of this demand is through our amazing Bootcamp and University partners, strong press we've been able to receive from around the country (including the Boston Globe), and biggest of all word of mouth.

Our biggest goal is to double the number of People of Color in tech jobs from 9% to 18% by 2024.

Competition, growing our internal team full of great players and continuing at the pace that we currently are are our largest obstacles.

Continuing to control what we can, make the best of all opportunities and have everything we do flow through our core mission of bridging the racial wealth gap. Plus enjoying the journey, and keeping our fun and joyful company culture.

 As we continue to grow and have more profiles on our platform, we will have more outcome data by volume, but as of now we are actively collecting the data we want to (but in smaller subsets). The one outcome we don't yet collect but would like to, is collecting skill similarities to know which career path has common skills (and therefore be able to suggest these to candidates who may have a few gaps).

We love getting asked this question. We experienced the core problem, being tech talent of color but struggling to get great opportunities. WE have personally seen the disconnect that exists. In addition to this, our team's various experiences really mesh well together. 2 of our C-suite members have founded other startups and our third worked in a senior role at a F-100 company. Plus, our primary advisors consist of a former F-500 senior recruiter, and the former CEO of Ask.com who we speak with near daily. 

To name a few...

Northeastern University

University of New Hampshire

SNHU

App Academy

Thinkful

General Assembly

NH Tech Alliance

Camelback Ventures

Countless others.

Shtudy is a completely free resource for job seekers. However, we monetize through charging companies $20,000 per hire (staffing industry charges on average, around $35,000 for the tech roles we specialize in AND their candidates are not screened). 

We already are profitable and have extremely favorable (and sustainable) margins due to the nature of our business.

We have over $120,000 in contracts signed since September 2020, and have much more expected to close in the next few days. We also raised $80,000 Friends and Family and additionally received $40,000 from Camelback Ventures (our awesome accelerator). We have an angel investor also worth $8,000.

Despite already being profitable and having no issue generating significant revenue, we still may be interested in raising more money if it makes sense. Growth and speed is important to us.

Our next significant  expenses (without price estimates) are as follows:

Hire tech team to deepen our AI technology and deliver the best
diversity recruitment software on the market. (30%)
Hire customer support reps to make smart product iterations.
(25%)
Scale the sales team to handle heavy influx of product demand.
(15%)

 Hire dedicated account and candidate success managers to

deliver a great user experience (30%)

We are making great strides and are generating revenue, however we still have major expenses and want to grow rapidly. People are struggling, especially with the combination of COVID-19 AND the social justice issues going on right now in our country. They would really benefit from using Shtudy as soon as possible, and we are limited with having to people as consultants/part time when we could really use them fulltime.

We want to work with people who are passionate about solving the issues that we are working on, and additionally those who can help us accelerate our progress and growth. 

Afrotech, Tech crunch, AISES, SHPE are all organizations we would love to connect and partner with. Also we are always looking to work with amazing companies who prioritize diversity.