Founders Stories: Handshake with Garrett Lord | ASU+GSV 2022

Great. Hi Garrett, it's great to see you.

Great to talk with you too, Julia.

Um, well, awesome. Well, I want to start us out, um, with actually the founding story of Handshake, which I've obviously heard before, but I think it's a wonderful story and I think it also really grounds the work that you all continue to do. So maybe we can start there and you can share the founding story and how that vision has evolved over the last 9 years.

Yeah, well, thanks for having me. I started Handshake out of a personal problem that I faced and witnessed many friends face navigating their way from college to career. My dad's in construction, my mom was a secretary. I went to this great school, but kind of in the middle of nowhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. For those of you who knew there was a whole Upper Peninsula. I went to community college for the first 2 years before I transferred up to school. And this problem around the socioeconomic status of your family and what school you go to really defining your career trajectory outside of college is just deeply unfair. And we find it really frustrating. Today in America, 43% of college students graduate underemployed, meaning they're working a job that didn't require a college degree. So much of what we were trying to do, the founding story was starting to build Handshake in college after I had broken into an internship in Silicon Valley. I remember meeting my first folks at the internship at a national laboratory from Stanford, and them talking about Google coming to campus, I couldn't believe it. I mean, Google, like, oh my gosh, they show up in your school, they go to your career fair, no way. What's this thing called, iBanking, internet banking? I just had no idea what was out there. And we started Handshake with this mission in college around democratizing access to information, democratizing access to jobs regardless of what your parents did or what school you went to, and democratize access to skills and helping students understand what skills they need for employment. And we've added on now later in our journey kind of unlocking social capital for those that don't actually have networks, because so much of the college job search process is you don't actually have a network. And So we often call this kind of population the unlinked student population. They don't have connections. And so we started our business in Upper Peninsula, Michigan, in a $700 a month house. I lived out of a Ford Focus driving around to schools for 4 months with my co-founder, 3 or 4 months. We would sleep in the back of McDonald's parking lots because there's good Wi-Fi at all McDonald's and they're well lit. Police don't oftentimes tap on your windows. In the back of McDonald's parking lots, whereas if you park on the side of the road or in a cul-de-sac, that we learned very quickly that's not an effective way to get a night's sleep. We showered in pools at universities because they generally leave it open for students and faculty to swim in the morning, and it's a good way to get a shower before you go talk to the career center, which is our customers. We sell— we, you know, we put 36,000 miles on the car over the summer. Drove all around the country trying to sign up universities to this product we had built in college. We got very lucky that we signed up our first 5 customers. And the journey has kind of been— it was pretty humble from there. I mean, we were working out of a house in Upper Peninsula, Michigan with 5 customers that believed in what we could do and believed in the principles of what we were trying to— they also thought the ecosystem was really unfair and was really structured in an unfair way. And it was really challenging for companies to recruit at scale. And And a fast forward from those group of friends who took menial salaries and believed in a more fair future, we now today, fast forward, you know, 9 years, we're the largest place that college students and young professionals find and search for job opportunities. We work with 100% of the Fortune 500, 650,000 companies. We partner with 1,400 higher education institutions, including community colleges, boot camps, 4-year institutions. And most college students in America use us. And if you talk to college students today, it's like a verb. It's like, yeah, duh, I've heard of Handshake. But it's pretty cool to see how far we've come. And the mission is very consistent still. I mean, we are laser-focused as a team on breaking down barriers for college students and helping with access to opportunities, with access to information, helping regardless of kind of who you know or what you know, build the right relationships to help you find entry-level employment and to learn the skills you need to hopefully find yourself into a career that needed a college degree.

Great. That's great. So the last few years has sort of seriously impacted college recruiting, the pandemic, in terms of how— what college recruiting looks like and what's happening on college campuses. Can you share what that has meant for Handshake and how, how you evolved as, as the sector was evolving?

Yeah. So COVID, I mean, overnight the world changed in a huge way for college students. I mean, you remember how much uncertainty there was just in the early chapters of COVID where students went home from school, employers weren't able to send folks into offices that, you know, We were, we were kind of had two priorities. One, take care of our employee population. And two, like, how do we serve our customers? Like, and it became very apparent early on that there was going to be no way that companies and students could connect if there weren't career fairs and students weren't coming to campus. So we kind of took our entire product roadmap that we had for that year, threw it out the window. And we ran, there was a daily standup every single day for like almost a year as we pivoted our entire company towards virtual-first recruiting. It was pretty, I'll be honest, it was, it was really actually like kind of scary at the time, but we felt that, you know, our responsibility and like our mission of our company is around helping, helping this graduating class navigate into positive employment and to help. And what we, what we were hearing from students and employers is like, how are we going to meet employers? And we're hearing from employers, how do we meet students? How students are, how are we going to learn from one another? And so we saw this, our university partners were really scared that they weren't going to be able to run career fairs. They weren't going to be able to offer these services to their students as they were trying to reposition all of learning online. So we pivoted the company to virtual and it has been extraordinary. I mean, um, we, a lot of our team, I think almost felt like we had an opportunity to be like heroes in this mission and like really come behind our university partners, our employer partners, and our students and like help them connect on Handshake. And that, that pivot of the company towards virtual-first recruiting early, that early, you know, to have the conviction to move that quickly has turned out to be kind of one of the most important decisions we've ever made as a business. You know, this— over this calendar year, we saw students make 1.7 million relationships in 2021, up 2x from 2020, via virtual career fairs, one-on-one video chats, direct messaging with, with actual recruiters. 37% more students used Handshake with to, to build relationships with employers than LinkedIn, and 106% more students use Handshake to build relationships with employers than Indeed. So this is just, you know, you've seen this pull from into virtual, into virtual recruiting. A couple other small kind of, or big aspects of what this has done to our business is virtual recruiting is more inclusive, like just far and away. Like a lot of companies thought, you know, how do A lot of companies' priorities are, you know, how do I build the right representative workforce for the future? How do I have diversity of thought in my organization? How do I hire more women, more Latinx students? How do I hire more Black college students? And, you know, in the old world, like the way the companies thought about recruiting, say Black students, for example, is they went to one HBCU career fair, the AUC career fair once a year. And that was like their strategy. Fast forward to a virtual-first recruiting strategy, companies are actually able to reach Black college students at any university across the country, right? They're able to actually get super targeted by major, by interests, by location preferences, by profiles and extracurriculars, and actually target these students and build authentic recruiting experiences. We've heard from students conversely that like students find this experience way less intimidating than walking into a— shocker— a sweaty gymnasium with like 300 companies sitting at their career fair booth. So we've really seen students say that they'd rather participate in these experiences from the comfort of their dorm room, or from their off-campus housing and connect with employers and be able to connect with more employers amidst working jobs, attending school, and also trying to find and learn more about career opportunities. So, and the kind of the final factor of that, so employers have found it better. We now have like a company like General Motors. They used to recruit at 18 schools. Now they recruit at 750 schools. They had more women, more Black students, and more Latinx students, and they hired more software engineers than ever before. Through COVID. And that was by extending the net from 18 schools to 750. And that's, that's really the power of virtual recruiting.

And so, and so it's here to stay. Like, it is— there's no going back from, from where we, where we are with virtual-first recruiting.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think when you hear those metrics, right, like, well, just, just, just like a funny double-click on that— they went from 18 to 750 schools, they hired more underrepresented students in more than ever before, and more software engineers. And the fun shocker about it is they did so at 50% less cost per hire. So I mean, when you see business outcomes like that, where it's like half the costs and way better outcomes, that it's just, it's very clearly here to stay.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious, Garrett, like you have access to sort of incredible data in terms of like what college students want and what they're thinking about when it comes to employers. And we know across the board that the pandemic has shifted how employees think about employers. Like when you look at mid career professionals. There's a lot of talk about the great resignation. I'm curious, like, what do you see with recent college grads or fresh college grads? Like, how has their relationship to employers changed, or what they're looking for from employers changed?

I mean, some of the trends that we released in the Handshake Network Trends Survey that I think are top of mind for me with this question are really around the fact that students want to work on problems that matter. To real people. They want to work on missions that matter. They, you know, this next generation really cares about impact and helping create, you know, solve or impact societal problems. They want to see a connection with just authentic leaders who actually treat them as real people and recognize the balance of work and outside of work in, you know, and I'd say a more material way than prior generations. Um, Another aspect that is, uh, I'd say, uh, maybe not top of mind for business leaders, but, but very much top of mind for business leaders that are hiring a lot of entry-level talent, and is, is the focus on representation and building an inclusive culture for all types of, uh, folks at your company. Specifically, like, if you look at like a lot of the large accounting firms or a lot of the large big tech employers, a lot of large finance employers, What they're focused on is like the prospective students that are coming in are actually asking the hard questions. Like, what is the representation of your company? What does the leadership team look like? Like, what can you explain what day in the life actually looks like? Like, what type of programming is available for me to build a sense of community inside of the workplace? It's, it's less focused on, I think prior generations were like, how does this job get me to my next job, which gets me to my next job? Like it is, it's, I'd say more in balance than in prior generations.

I'm gonna throw out a few more stats. So 49% of college graduates received an offer from Handshake over the last few years. You've had 650,000 companies using Handshake, including 100% of the Fortune 500 companies. You raised $200 million this year. What's next for Handshake? Like, what's the next big thing?

Yeah, so yeah, it's been an incredible couple years. I mean, we've doubled our valuation the last 3 years in a row. We've doubled our headcount the last several years in a row. I'm really— that's on the back of doubling revenue. You know, we doubled revenue last year, we'll double revenue this year, we doubled revenue the year before. You know, really we are growing incredibly quickly around this mission of around building the early career network of the future and being the number one place for alumni to start, restart, or jumpstart their careers. And, you know, so many of these people, these young people, are unlinked. They don't have the existing networks and their skills don't map to these kind of narrow pathways that employers think about hiring. So And this is a huge problem. I mean, you think about underemployment, you think about the societal backdrop around a lack of skills to meet the need of companies in the future. We're hearing workforce leaders at our largest companies say that they actually won't be able to— there aren't enough college graduates to meet the needs of the workforce skills they need in the future. And so they're focused on, you know, how do we help find— when we think about our future, we really think about Handshake as helping power the entire entry-level career journey. And entry-level means how do we help you, once you have the job-ready skills, navigate the early parts of your employment around finding your first internship, finding your first apprenticeship, finding your first job, and navigating the early parts of the careers and learning the skills you need to find the second job and the third job. I mean, we really view Handshake as higher education is very much like unbundling. You know, I'm not trying to say higher education's dying. I think a lot of people think higher— you know, there's a lot of talk around higher education's future. I think higher education very much Many of those institutions are very much here to stay, but there will— there's increasingly becoming these incredible pathways into knowledge worker work through community colleges, through boot camps, through apprenticeship programs, through companies like CoRise, Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, Google Skills, Cisco Netacad, Salesforce Trailforks. Like, there are all these opportunities to learn job-ready skills, and there are employers that are interested in finding them. And that's where I think Handshake plays well, is Today, Handshake is a verb with college students in America. We're increasingly becoming a verb with non-traditional learners who are trying to break into that entry-level opportunity. And when you think about our company, we have 650,000 companies, many of which are actually very eager to hire and opening up their aperture beyond a 4-year degree. And so that's really where Handshake plays, is the career network of the future for folks trying to start, jumpstart, or restart their career.

That's terrific. That's super inspiring. So I'm going to shift gears a little bit and switch to talk about you as a founder and a leader. And this is quite selfish, as I am an early-stage founder. And so these are some of the questions that I have. And presumably, there's a lot of other founders here at the summit. And I think that they'd be really curious about these questions as well. So starting out, like, Handshake has gone from an idea to being a $3.5 billion company over the last 9 years. And when you started it, you were you were in college. So you've had to grow tremendously as a leader over the last, you know, 9 years. I'm curious how you've approached that, like how you've thought about your own development. How do you make sure that you're growing as quickly as your company is growing? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah. Well, funny enough, I'm being interviewed by somebody who's like a real deal leader herself and somebody who I very much look up to, Julia. So, you know, don't, I'm not, I don't know how much there's to learn for me, but I mean, I very much like, you know, I think on my side, just like this something, you know, I'm a, I grew up in the Midwest. I like, I'm living a complete dream, a dream that wasn't always a dream. I mean, it was, it was really tough early. You know, it was really, really, really challenging. And quite frankly, like, you know, pretty miserable. And I think something I've just been fortunate with is like, just, you know, having this kind of relentlessly resourceful mindset, just like, you know, really believing, you know, I still struggle with this sometimes, but I, you know, I get my own head around imposter syndrome, but I just, every year I just continue to kind of realize like everyone puts their pants on the same way, you know, like maybe it's right leg first and left leg, maybe Maybe it's left leg, then right leg, but everyone puts them on the same way. I've sat at some incredible tables and the realization that hard work, being— where I get really focused is like, what does the company need 6 months from now? And how do I need to surround myself either with people or resources, generally with people? I mean, that's the way that I learn most effectively. I'm unabashedly willing to ask anyone for help and advice. Solicit a lot of input. I think I am quite blessed with the fact that I'm like very self-aware. Like I very much like understand where I'm trying, where I have areas to improve and where the company needs to go. And sometimes where the company needs to go and I need to be good at, like aren't always fun. You know, like this interview, for example, like I've had to get a lot better at like PR and comms. And you know, maybe to joke around, I should probably slow down a little bit because that's the coaching I get. But like, You know, it's important to surround yourself with people that can help you in areas both you need to grow from a capability perspective in building a company, and also help you grow as a leader. I've worked with an executive coach at every step of this journey. I've now worked with like 3 different ones, kind of soaking up little different tidbits and then moving on to the next one. But, and then I also, last thing I'll say is like, people might look at this screen and be like, oh, Garrett did, you know, it's like, It's a team. Like, my team is so cool. Like, you know, my direct executive team is so talented. You know many of these people, Julia, like, who have been with on this journey for years, and new teammates. Like, it is— Handshake is not me. Handshake is like the effort of, you know, 35 to 40 key leaders and, you know, 500 passionate people that like care about this mission. And so, um, and that's always been the story of Handshake. It's been like way more about the team than, than just like me.

That's great, that's great. Um, so a related question is, one of the things that I saw as an investor was this like big, um, turning point for companies as they sort of emerged from like a Series A and they, um, got, you know, started moving towards the growth stage of the company, and that was the sort of like critical moment for companies. And, um, I'm curious if you have any advice or thoughts there as, as companies are, are going into that, you know, phase of growth, like anything that you wish you had known as you headed into it.

Well, funny enough, to make this conversational funny, is like try to hire Julias early in your journey. Um, like try to hire executives. Like that, that's the number one thing. And Julia, that's how we met way back in the day, was, you know, talking about recruiting and But it's like the story of my success, the story of our success at Handshake has been hiring more experienced people than myself. And I mean, there's a balance there, but that's the number one thing founders get wrong. They're like, in my opinion, I invested in several seed round companies, a lot of my friends have started companies, successful and not successful, and there is a very clear opinion I have around building at the right stage, the right level of leader for that stage. And I think companies, so many of them, you know, outside of like just product market fit, right? Like there's a whole kind of product market fit question. When you're at product market fit and you have some sense of early product market fit, like the earlier you can bring in folks that have been there and done it before, specifically in capabilities that you need in your organization with the right kind of right level of executive presence and right level of journey, like that's, that's the key to success. And there's been a lot of key to a lot of our success at Handshake.

That's great. That's great. And it sounds like also like coupling that with the sort of like humility and self-awareness of like knowing your own strengths as a leader and where you can sort of really lean into others to plug those gaps is critical. Okay. So my last question is, Handshake has a really special culture and it's something that you've been very intentional about building. Since the early days. Can you talk a little bit about Handshake's culture? Like, how would you describe it? And then how did you approach building it?

Yeah. I mean, we end up attracting folks to Handshake that really care about working on an important mission. I mean, uh, at the start of the company, we couldn't pay as much as Google. We— nobody knew what we were doing. Like, we didn't have as cool offices, and we had bagels on Friday mornings, but like, you know, we didn't have lunch. Um, and the people that self-selected to join us were like ex-Teach for America, like ex, you know, people that just like care, that resonated with this problem. And they're like, why is it that like based on what your parents do and whether you grew up in Greenwich or not, like you get a good job? And, uh, I think what that's evolved into, you know, in combination with this kind of like Midwest, low ego, hardworking, you know, high integrity, uh, kind of early founding team is it's evolved into this like a very mission-driven, um, business. And the other fun thing is like we have a very fun business. I mean, revenue is doubling, like we're a 90% gross margin, top tier net dollar retention. Like, I mean, what the business is, is ripping. And it's a fun business to work on, but it's also deeply attached to like a problem that matters. And like, we make money by helping companies like, you know, Google hire students that they never would have met before, right? And like, they pay us, you know, companies spend millions of dollars a year on Handshake, and they are, you know, they're directly targeting first-generation college students, students at small rural institutions, right? Software engineers that historically wouldn't have been seen before. And I just think that That like connection between revenue and mission is really what makes Handshake so vibrant internally, and a deep focus on like students and learners being first. So that's kind of a little bit, and then I also say like your culture evolves over time. Like, you know, through different hires we made, like we had an executive that was a consultant, we started adding a little bit more, you know, structure to the company, specifically around like meeting cadences and fostering a more inclusive communication cadence internally. We, we added somebody, you know, so you add different folks and that just kind of evolves your culture over time, I would say as well.

That's great. Well, I think we are at time. So Garrett, thank you so much.

Have a great day, Julia.