In this Founder Institute Toronto alumni interview, host Jonathan introduces Courtney Brand, the founder and CEO of The Lighthouse, a personalized career‑growth platform (thelighthouse.us). Courtney explains her background in management consulting and the frustration she felt relying on family and friends for career advice, highlighting a market gap for objective, contextual guidance. She describes The Lighthouse as a platform that connects professionals with the right insight at the right time, enabling incremental career moves. The service is offered directly to individuals and also through corporate sponsorships, where companies purchase memberships for employees as a talent‑development perk. The conversation touches on the heightened demand for upskilling during COVID‑19 and notes that such career‑growth benefits are the top priority for millennial workers, indicating a sizable market opportunity.
Chapters
So we have Courtney piping in here from Brooklyn, New York, and Courtney's doing The Lighthouse, and that's thelighthouse.us, and it's a— I guess you could describe it in a nutshell as sort of a personalized, like, career growth platform, right?
Yeah, that's exactly right. Thanks, Jonathan. Hi everyone, thanks so much for joining today. So my name is Courtney Brand, and I'm the founder and CEO of The Lighthouse. A little bit of background on me. So prior to starting the company, my career was in management consulting. And kind of as I grew my career, I've always been really driven, really career-focused, and became increasingly frustrated that as I was navigating career inflection points, I was looking for advice, I was looking for insight, and I ultimately was still calling my mom and my sister for career advice. And recognizing that there was a big gap there in terms of how objective the advice was and also context. And upon looking into it, found that that is the go-to solution for most people getting career advice today, is most professionals rely on their direct network, whether that's their partners, their parents, their siblings, their friends. And so what we're realizing is that careers are changing faster than ever. We are now navigating a lot more changes throughout our career, and also those changes are more extreme. And so really, with the Lighthouse, the objective was How can we create a platform that makes it really easy to get connected to the right insight at the right time so that you can move one step forward in your career, whatever that happens to mean for you in the moment. Today, we work with companies that are actually sponsoring Lighthouse memberships for their employees as a way to invest in their personalized career growth.
That's interesting too. Yeah, I mean, I guess with businesses right now, especially with COVID there's going to be— need to be a lot of upskilling involved. Right? And I guess they see that as a pretty big perk to offer to some of their employees, right?
It's the number one benefit millennials want. So yes, there's a large market for it.
