The Future of Work in a Post-COVID World, with Techstars' Taylor McLemore

Hey everybody, welcome to this Founder Institute webinar. My name is Jonathan Gritchen. I'm a co-founder of the Founder Institute, and I do see we got some people joining right now, which is great. If you are joining, let us know where you're from. We do— we are expecting people from a lot of different places to be joining the webinar today, so don't be shy. There is a chat box there. This is a 100% 100% live event. This isn't prerecorded. So if you actually ask us a question, we'll answer it. So, all right, awesome. Deandra, virtual high five to you. Houston, Texas in the house. Miami, Florida, Wisconsin, Bogotá, Palo Alto, London. All right, awesome. Thanks, guys. And let's keep this a theme for this webinar, okay? This is supposed to be a discussion, an interactive discussion. Right? You can go to YouTube and watch any one-sided videos. You can go to Netflix and do that too. But we wanna interact with you and answer your questions about the future of work and about the Techstars Accelerator. So throw them into the chat and we have somebody in there who will be feeding them to me throughout the event. All right. So really quick note about FI. We are the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. That means that we work with founders before they're ready to raise funding. They're at this pre and sometimes pre-team but definitely pre-traction and pre-seed state, and definitely before a program like Techstars, which we'll be talking about today. And we are enrolling now because of the time of COVID These are some of the best times to ever build a startup. We're enrolling now in more cities than we ever have been in our 11-year history. So check out fi.co/enrolling. And because I know there'll be a decent number of people on the webinar today from Colorado, we're also enrolling in our Denver and Greater Colorado program. So check that out at fi.co/join. Okay, so with that aside, we're gonna be talking about kind of the changes, the future of work and the future of the workforce today. And I know that's, you know, could seem kind of vague and our guest is gonna help us break down exactly what that means. But at least for me, sort of the uninitiated on some of this stuff, if you look at the last couple of years, you know, the dynamics of the workforce are always evolving. Flux, right? First, it was globalization was changing the dynamics of the workforce. Now you have things like bots, AI, machine learning, robotics, etc., right? And these— the workforce dynamics were always changing at a very rapid rate before COVID and COVID has acted as a pretty large accelerant to, to move us into the future, which we may have thought be a decade away or something like that, like, but now the future is here. COVID has acted as a great accelerant for a lot of these trends. And I think where a lot of people go wrong is they think it's just the virtual component, right? It's just like the Zoom or something like that, but it really has a lot of other meta effects and these create both problems and opportunities. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. And we got probably one of the best people on the planet to help us talk about it. Taylor, you want to unmute yourself and introduce yourself? For sure.

Hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you all. Thanks to Counter Institute for having me join this conversation today. As Jonathan was saying, I think this is extremely relevant. I'm a believer it's always relevant, but I think there's a very easy case to be made of today, now more than ever, we need to be thinking about these things. And also, to that point, it's so multidimensional. So Jonathan, do you want me to share a little bit now about kind of how we think about future work and workforce, or a little bit later?

Yeah, for sure. I would, you know, just very quick also, Taylor, we've been working with Taylor's previous organization for a while. It's called Patriot Bootcamp. You can see that at patriotbootcamp.org. Great organization with a great mission to help vets and military spouses build companies. But yeah, let us know. And I was sort of joking with Taylor beforehand. The Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator, you know, workforce development, right? Like, how would you define that? Where, what is the realm that you, that you see that encompassing?

Yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, one that is both a little challenging because people understand it in different ways. I mean, I think that's both their proximity to it or maybe their different relations to it. Workforce development can mean, you know, the way that the government interacts in helping people find jobs. Some people think about it in terms of how companies think about the plans for their growing workforce. Some people think about it as education leading into workforce and people getting into the labor market and those careers. My answer is all the above. And so I take a very all-encompassing view of it because it's a holistic approach to how do we understand the problems in the labor market and understand them deeply because they're very multidimensional. And then think about how solutions are both, you know, solving both those problems in the near term, medium term, and long term. And to that point that you were making, Jonathan, that's accelerated, right? Like that timeline. And we can talk about that in more specifics, um, at any point that's useful. But, you know, the thing that I would really highlight is that I get a— I have a lot of resonance with the idea of focusing on workforce companies and startups and founders that love this space because it's inherently very human-centric. Uh, it's not technology for the sake of technology. Or services or product for the sake of just making money. Almost to 100%, when I interact with founders that are interested in this space, it's because they are saying, I want to help solve problems for people. And that's what I personally love about it.

It's people. It's how people make a living. Yeah, right. It's how people make a living on one side. It's how we educate them or prepare them to do that. And then on the other side, on the corporate side, right, it's how they hire. It's how they manage. It's, it's, it's really It's sort of the basis of our economy if you really look at it, that holistic view, right?

It really is. And, you know, not only that, definitely agree on that point. It's the core of our economy and how our economy works from everything from companies creating value to consumers spending money, education helping us all grow. But it's also how we function as a society, right? A lot of our identities are wrapped up in our work. A lot of, you know, how we get meaning in our world. And, you know, I hope that everyone is also thinking in this time of a lot of change, the question questions of balance between different parts of work and life and how those all integrate, because I think that's a critical part of this as well. But it really is, it's built into the fabric of our society. It's, and it's fun that way, in my opinion, because you can look at different angles and views of this, different segments of the population, you know, whether it's the lower skill, mid skill, higher skill, and also just things that are about changing lives. Who are the people that don't have as much economic mobility? And how can we change that? And, you know, just to make sure, 'cause I think it's important that we recognize it as part of this discussion about workforce development and the future of work is we're at this culmination period of history of racial inequality, racial injustice, systemic racism. That is both happening at the same time as the future of work is changing so fast, It's also part of it. You know, we— you can look at the data and see that the populations and parts of our nation that have had the least economic mobility are getting hit hardest by this crisis. And so that is both devastating and something for us all to take very seriously. But back to the points you were making, there's opportunity in that. When there's change, there's opportunity. And I think that's, that's what we can all take a step back and say we want to see our nation be stronger, more cohesive, more diverse, more inclusive, more equitable, now's the time to make those changes.

And that's a perfect segue, Taylor, into the first topic here. And just to reiterate for everybody in the chat, ask us questions, all right? Don't be shy. I'll give you another virtual high five if that helps, a little gamification aspect. But ask us questions. We want this event to be interactive. But as we were saying there, right, the first topic is like, how is COVID accelerating the future of work, right? And I think that may be a little bit obvious, but I think what you were starting to get into is how, you know, the bigger changes and the bigger impacts this can actually have on society, right? The implications. So you mentioned widening the income gap, right? And is that in your opinion because more and more companies now with COVID are just going to turn to robotics, contractors, and all this kind of stuff that provides them flexibility in the case that we have more, you know, more outbreaks or different strains of outbreaks, which is sort of a certainty, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And, you know, first of all, if you look at the economic research, we're at an interesting point because despite people that I feel live in sort of our realms and probably a lot of the founders that are interacting in your community, We see how technology is changing stuff all the time. In fact, we're the ones doing a lot of the building of it. At the same time, if you go talk to some of the leading economists and labor economists, they'll say we haven't seen productivity change that much. So there's this really interesting gap in that perspective, in my opinion. It's that there's still an adoption curve for how a lot of this stuff is going to influence. Are robots going to take over tomorrow?

No.

How fast are they going to take over?

It's been accelerated though, right?

It's been accelerated, but I think that the real story is that robots, as a blanket term for automation using technology and computers, whether that's physical robots, software robots, etc., they're really good at deep vertical things. They're good at like stuff where they're able to see specific patterns within a space, you know, whether that's machine learning applications, AI, but they're really not good at broad things. And we— and there's, there's not a clear path about how that's going to change overnight. And that's where the human piece is still there. And what I think is exciting is when we think about how are we giving people leverage to do that. We have all of this power with these amazing cloud computing systems, but if only a certain few people know the coding languages to access that power, it's not very useful. But that's what's really exciting to me as we think about this future of work. The acceleration from COVID is a theme that really stands out in the companies I've been talking to. Has been around for a long time, but it's product design. It's user-centered product design. It's how do you take a product that whether you're in manufacturing or whether you're in staffing, and you can let anyone in the company have the power of the cloud computing, the machine learning, the AI that cannot do the entire job by itself. It's just like that while there is some job displacement, there is still a critical need for humans to really be the guiding factor across those horizontal solution sets. And it's, can you make that usable? Can you give the humans that are at the core of the businesses the power to deliver even more value? And the beautiful thing that we were talking about is with this acceleration, that was a 5 or 10-year conversation, whether it's working virtually, whether it's distributed teams, all of those things have gone from 5 years to 5 months. And that's beautiful in a lot of ways because the people, you know, as founders trying to build stuff from zero to one, which is so tough, Waiting for, you know, the early adopters to get through them to get to the mass market is kind of the painful part when you're an innovator. And guess what? It just sped up. So it's a beautiful moment for us as innovators to jump in and say, we can work better this way, or we can create better employee experiences this way. That's the opportunity.

Right. And yeah, the opportunity is that just the— now it's not local job markets or anything like this. It's global job markets. Right? And it's allowing people in a lot of places that maybe didn't have access to certain job markets, now they have access to them. You know, what are, what are some of the most interesting, you know, parts of how it's accelerating the future right now for you that, that, that you're seeing?

Yeah. So, let, you know, one of, one of the ways is, I think that this moment and the level of unemployment is bringing the appropriate and very fair critical lens to our education. System, which, well, is very strong, and, you know, I think by many measures is the strongest one in the world amongst other countries that have great ones as well. There's a lot of parts about it that are broken. And right now, the unemployment and the demand from employers for the right people with the right skills to do the job well is creating greater integration between the work to be done in the education, that they shouldn't feel as separated as they do in many cases. Why is it I need to go to school for a bunch of years and then all of a sudden And then I'm gonna jump into this other thing that's called the workplace, which feels totally different. Like, why are those not more integrated? And like, we have mechanisms for that. It's called internships, it's called apprenticeships, but it's not the main part of it. And that's, in my opinion, craziness. And that doesn't detract from the idea of education being critical. This isn't, hey, everyone should just learn a trade and nothing else. I'm a believer that whole-person education is critical for our democracy, for smart voters, for intelligent communities to really build. We need that integration to go further. And guess what? This virtual environment makes it easier than ever. That's the beautiful part. It's not as much go to the college campus or the community college campus for a bunch of years, disappear into that part of it, to then reappear on the work side. In the virtual environment where the barriers don't exist as much, we can blend that in a much easier way. So, you know, that's one of the things I find really exciting. It's easier in some places than others, right? Like, to your point, that, you know, opportunity being global now, that, you know, the classic saying of Talent is distributed evenly, but opportunity is not. And this is our chance to redistribute that opportunity. I've seen that firsthand. I helped launch a coding school down in Latin America called Codeable, down in Peru. And it was amazing. We helped people go from being part of the informal economy, making less than $100 a month under the table, to within 6 to 9 months later, making $2,000 a month as a software engineer. Which is, you know, like, it's honestly one of the things that's been most meaningful in my career is to help build towards people's paths so that they could create those outcomes for themselves. But, you know, there are some harder places, right? Like, if you're learning how to be a mechanic, you can't do it all on a computer. You still have to go into somewhere to learn how to work on an engine. That middle skill gap, which is the biggest gap in our country where there is so much demand and not enough labor, and most importantly, the connection points between the supply and demand sides are not as efficient as they need to be. And the sad part is that that inefficiency leads to real human issues of I can't find a good job. That's where the innovation needs to focus. I love the coding school side. I was involved with that. But if I were to say one thing to founders, high-skilled jobs, there's a higher demand and less supply. You have a flip in the middle skill space. If you want to go solve big problems that create real impact on people's lives, focus on the middle skill issues.

Interesting. Yeah. So basically what you're diving into here is sort of our— the employment or the education to employment. Right? It's sort of everything that's in between there. And for sure, our education system, especially here in the US, and I know we have some international people, that's going to be something that, that moves at the pace of like molasses, right? Like that thing's not going to move fast. And that's where a lot of educational institutions have come into play, but a lot of them are struggling right now too, right? So it may even exacerbate this problem of getting people the right skills that they need affordably, obviously, right, in, in all of these other— in these places where maybe they didn't, didn't need or even think about having those skills before.

So true. And, you know, I really like the word you're using to describe this, which is, you know, skills, because ideally we live in a world where it's more competency-based and skill-based hiring, but we don't. So, you know, if you, if you take a step back for a moment, you think, how do most people get hired? It's not that they were chosen from a large pool of people based on having the right skills. Number one, it's usually based on referrals as the number one way to get a job, which is a form of social capital. Do you have access to the right networks? So number one, that's how the majority of jobs, you know, are found and earned. The other challenge is—

which, by the way, I'm sorry to interrupt, by the way, isn't that kind of crazy?

Totally.

Because with all of the virtual things that we've been doing for, you know, ever since the internet was invented We're still relying on this antiquated way, basically, which limits us geographically, socioeconomically, all these different things, right? We're still in these little bubbles.

Yeah. And it is crazy. At the same time, I think we can all have empathy for the why, right? Because if you are a business owner, business builder, hiring manager, you have a lot on the line when you hire someone. The hardest thing that I think is also the most beautiful thing about when you're— and I've had the experience of leading recruiting teams, which is super fun. It's this combination of art and science. That's honestly a lot more art than science. It's looking at incomplete data and trying to estimate the potential of another person. So hard. But you look for these other things like, oh, I know someone and they say they're good. To your point, like that exists, or they got a degree from the right place. And it's not that you actually know anything about that educational experience. It's just a signaling mechanism of, you know, and to, to pick on easy examples. They went to Harvard, right? Which is like just a signal. You have no idea. They could have studied something that had nothing to do with the job, but they went to Harvard or whatever institution you want to, you want to use. And, you know, obviously there's, there's nothing wrong with Harvard. There's a lot that's right with Harvard. But also that problem is pervasive for a lot of people that are going to places that aren't Harvard. So you have those compounding issues and there's no good data set. There's no way for the hiring manager to say, oh, I tested them and I know they've got the right skills, but they didn't go to this big name school. Those are where— that's another area where we're lacking. That's where if we can figure out ways to help people searching for jobs share what their skills are, and then for the employers to be able to analyze that in an effective manner, we can start moving in the direction of the skill-based hiring world that I think is much more, you know, effective, efficient, and equitable and fair.

Right, because when you say skill-based, it's also, it's, it's a kind of a meritocracy, right? At that point, a lot of these networks are, yeah, they're going to be distributed and a lot more people are going, just going to be looking for specific skills because literally right now the needs of most employers in the United States are changing extremely rapidly, right? And around the world and education systems, the training systems are not moving fast enough. To supply them with the skills that they need. So, okay. So I have a question from Maria here, and thank you, Maria, and anyone else with questions in the chat, please keep them coming, which is gonna help us transition into the next topic here, which the next topic is sort of, okay, like, it's the changes right now are gonna cause issues, right? There is going to be a widening pay gap. There is going, I mean, these are all things, to be honest with you, it scares me. Okay, because I didn't think like the United States could be any more divided, but things are going to get worse, at least socioeconomically, and usually politically that follows. But Maria's question to start getting us into like how, like solutions, what are some of the themes of ways that entrepreneurs or even policymakers, anybody can try to fix what's, or adapt to what's coming our way. Her question is, what are your thoughts on breaking the pay gap cycle? You know, and sort of, it's no secret that tech culture has worsened pay gaps between, you know, different groups, right? I have an answer to that too, but if you want to— do you have anything, Taylor?

Well, so I receive that question in two parts. One is, you were mentioning kind of the tech world, right? Which, if you look in aggregate, is actually a relatively small part of the economy. Right? Facebook and the others get a lot of noise in that, but if you look at it from any method of revenue, total market capitalization, it's a small part of the US economy. But especially in specific cities, like places like San Francisco, you see high impact from that wealth disparity that's occurring. I have a simple sort of mindset on how to solve that, which is we need to fix opportunities for employee equity ownership. In profit sharing. I think that we should not do anything to deter businesses from being great and being successful, but we need to create the right structures so that it's not a small percentage of the people that become billionaires, but rather a lot of people that become very wealthy in a distributed, fair, even manner that helped contribute to that. And let's see that, like, if we do that, I believe more companies will become more successful because of that alignment with their employee base. So for me, that's the one on the tech side. And then I can speak about the broader economic opportunities. I also think that equity ownership and profit sharing throughout the economy, not just the tech portion of the world, is a critical first step. But what were you going to say, Jonathan?

Yeah, I was just going to say that this is a cycle that's happened many times before. This happened with the advent of robotics back for car manufacturers and all this kind of stuff. So it's going to continue to happen. And there's going to be a whole other cycle that happens in 20 years that we are not even foreseeing right now. So I do think that now we're better equipped to handle it than we have been in the past. And I do think that the availability of distributing a lot of the work is going to be extremely helpful. At least that's my opinion on it. A couple of the other things here. So Ben was asking, you know, if I do want to— I'm going to paraphrase Ben here— if, you know, if I do want to start virtual networking, be less dependent on my region, whether it's for hiring investors or whatever, you know, is there a certain bar that needs to be met in that respect? Is the bar higher? Do you need to have a product? For example, you know, taking it from the startup point of view?

Great question. I don't know if there's a universal answer. I do think that it's just different interaction types, right? So if you're talking about like, hey, I used to go to events and meet people there, and that no longer is what I'm doing. You were there, they were there, they're probably not going to be rude and just walk away from you. They're going to listen to you a little So the basic bar to just getting attention is higher. You need to be more focused, targeted, and deliver on sort of a quality of message of why should someone spend time interacting with you, right? Whereas if you're all just in the same room, social norms drive us to at least listen to each other for a few minutes before we politely bow out. Whereas the difference is in these digital realms, you can just not respond. So like, there is a difference there, but I think that's for the It's a good— better or not on the social level, for us as entrepreneurs is better because it challenges us. It says, are we speaking to the right people the right way? And the other thing I really like about it is instead of just like, hey, we all happen to be in the same room together, I think it gives you a chance to be a community builder across this virtual world. And what do I mean by that? I mean, if you show up asking, what can you do for me? Let me tell you, my response when I get those messages is relatively guarded. But you know what? When someone shows up, no matter what their background, no matter what they're doing, and they just say, "Hey, this is what I'm working on. Would love your feedback, opinion, input, and how can I be helpful to you?" Or even better, "I did some research. Hey Taylor, I saw that you're doing some— you're focusing on future of work. I happen to be an expert in HR, and I saw this really cool company working on the future of how compensation changes. Thought you'd be interested." When you take that mentality, and in the Techstars community we talk about it as give first, it's giving without an expectation of getting something directly back in return, amazing things happen. You build relationships you wouldn't otherwise, you build community, you influence other people to act in a similar way, and when you get community circles acting together in a give-first manner, you don't know what you're going to get back, but if you keep giving first, I guarantee you, you'll get more back than you ever feels that you gave. In surprising ways. And that's, to me, the answer to that question, which is you do have a high bar, but start with give first, be authentic, be genuine, and you will create connections that, that will amaze you. I mean, that can really last for a long time and be productive in a reciprocal way. So that's what I think about that question. It's a great one.

Yeah, I agree. That's usually where a lot of people, when they look back, they'll say, oh, we got lucky right? But usually you sort of quote unquote make your own luck by, by doing things like that, right? But like, those, those are the types of activities, the giving first, that actually creates like these happenstance things, um, where you meet some person or whatever. So, uh, Stephen had a question here, and this is really getting into the impact component of it, right? We've been talking about a lot of changes that are going to happen in the workforce, and Stephen's thought is Or his question is, what are your thoughts on whether workplaces will be more inclusive or less with relation to the workforce going largely remote? And if it is less, if that's what you believe, what do you think may be some of the solutions? Now, these are really hard questions, Taylor, by the way. So just FYI, I love the really hard-hitting questions we're going get from the audience, but these are— yeah, these are— I mean, it's a big issue, and I'm certainly not sure how to answer that question.

Well, me too. I guess that would be my first part of my response to it, is number one, thank you for asking that question. Those are the questions we need to be asking, because if we don't ask the tough questions, we're not going to make progress on the most important problem, because the workplace is not as inclusive as it needs to be. Full stop. Right? So like, and it sounds as though, I think you said Steven was the one asking the question, he doesn't sound as though that person is going to disagree with that. But I believe that firmly. I think there's data that supports it. You can see it both in terms of the lack of diversity, and this is, I think, you know, an important distinction that people that think about this a lot, you know, you already understand it, but, you know, I think it's worth calling out. Hiring for diversity is great. Retaining a diverse team is a different thing, and that's where inclusion comes in. Inclusion is not just, hey, we hired whether it's people that didn't look like what we look like or come from different backgrounds. It's, did we make them a part of the team? Did they want to stick around? Did they help us create value in this company? And that's why I don't feel like I have any definitive answers to that very challenging question. I think it's both easier and harder, which is— I don't mean to sound like a cop-out answer. The good news is on making it a diverse and hopefully more inclusive work experience is that, um, we commonly recruit, as we were talking about before, from people that we already know in our circles, which leads to typically hiring people that look like us and come from similar backgrounds. That's the pattern and behavior that is persistent. By being virtual, it's not— you get the opportunity to say, I'm going to virtually travel somewhere that might have been hard otherwise to go find people that are different than me. As long as I'm willing to embrace that, that difference is, um, uh, something that I'm going to cherish and say our debate, our disagreement, is actually the creative friction that builds better solutions. And once again, there's a lot of data that supports that diverse teams outperform in the market, um, in terms of raising capital at the earlier stages, and then at later stage companies in terms of generating profit and market capitalization and equity growth. Growth. But that doesn't mean that people are going to get better at being inclusive with each other without intentional effort. One of the things that was shared with me recently by a group of founders at a startup called Cape Inclusion— have a lot of respect for that team, they're trying to work on these challenges— a lot of diversity training is built for the entire company. Diversity and inclusion training is built for the entire company on the assumption that they're trying to hope that while training everyone, they really address maybe one or two people that are really the problem. The thing that we need to do is stop using blanket solutions for diversity inclusion and understand that it is a person-to-person, department-to-department thing to measure. Are you hiring and retaining people with diversity in each department at each hiring manager level? What about the interactions in those teams is driving that retention of a diverse team that can solve problems with more creativity? That doesn't help happen without intention effort, and that's, I think, the answer to the question is What do we do? How do we talk about that? How do we create language as teams to say, I disagree with you, but I also respect your opinion. And it's not a, it's not a yes, but it's a yes, and in our debates, it's those sorts of things that can be better. And also psychological safety and security for people to speak up when they say, I'm uncomfortable when, I don't like it when, it's unfair that. If people don't feel like they can say those statements, the environment's not gonna change.

Right. And we're fully going into the second topic of the webinar here, which, you know, some of the themes that are gonna define the future of work. Obviously, diversity, equity, all of those things are going to be a very important part of the theme. And I think with regards to COVID, right, and it's not just COVID, it's the, what's going on in the entire world right now. This is all going to act as a great accelerant. Is it going to fix things? No, right? It's going to take a lot more to fix things, but it is, I think, it is going to help make some progress. Mike and Maria had a question like, you know, so assuming the workforce is equally digital— are you assuming that the workforce is equally digitally literate? Is this something that's being overlooked by technologists? And I'm going to use that as a segue into really the education component, right? It's the education, the training, and the upskilling component, which at least in my mind personally, with how quickly the world is changing right now and how fast it has been changing, that to me is where, you know, just personally, that gets me excited, where people can really make a large impact. What are your thoughts on that, Taylor?

Yeah, so, you know, just to kind of repeat it back to make sure I'm understanding the question effectively, it's is this idea of like equity within where people are starting on the digital side. And the answer, like, to answer that, no, like we can't assume that. We have to assume that that is completely not true. And in fact, once again, I'm not trying to cite everything here, but I will say that there is irrefutable data to show that that is not true. So it's not an assumption that we can or should make. I don't think we all do enough enough to respect that that divide is there though. First of all, let's talk at a few different levels, because I think this is really important. One is sort of individuals being able to understand and use technology. That's valuable and something that we need to work on, should be happening at the education level early on for children today, 'cause it's part of being part of the future of work. But it's also the infrastructure. I mean, I think this is one that we skip past commonly. If you look at broadband access and internet speed by zip code and correlate that to income level, it's almost a perfect correlation. There's a problem there. The people that we want to create more economic mobility for have the least access to the pipelines, to the information that supposedly is equally distributed through the internet. It's not equally distributed. Fast internet and access to it is not the same in lower-income neighborhoods as higher-income neighborhoods. Need to fix that if we want to solve this problem. We can have the best education systems and the best platforms for e-learning or whatever, but if it doesn't get to the person that needs it, doesn't matter. So infrastructure level, education to support growth and use of technology is an issue. I mentioned it before, but also product design. So if you're building a product to help someone get to their next job, get the training they need so that they can have greater economic success and have more opportunity afforded to them and their family, are you building it for a computer scientist? Or are you building it for someone that has very, you know, sort of earlier development skillset around using technology? You can solve those problems. You know, there are great examples. It doesn't have to be some crazy switchboard, highly complex product or solution. Like, there's some really cool companies that are delivering education via text message. Like, think about those things that can be great equalizers. But the problem is all of us, especially as builders, innovators, founders of companies, our minds starts spinning super fast. We can do this and then this and then this and then this. And it's— the challenge is to constrain it down. Simple is the hard part, right, when we're delivering a solution.

I definitely subscribe to that theory. Simplicity is better. Get to the root of the issue and just create a simple, simple solution to a problem. So you touched on a couple different things there. So you touched on infrastructure, right? You touched on the education component. Component. And what about— and I know this is a common question— like the kind of the networking component, right? And we touched— we talked about a little bit earlier, but what are the kind of opportunities or challenges that you're seeing there, especially now when— I don't know, you can call this a new virtual world, but virtual is going to be a component moving forward. Do you think that helps people get access to new networks that could help their careers, or do you think that maybe hurts it?

I think that there's a lot of opportunity, but just because there's opportunity doesn't mean that there's the pathways built for people to be successful. And I think that that's what we need to focus on. And, you know, beyond just sort of networking is this idea of creating connections with other people. You know, I'll use the term social capital. The networks that you have access to, you know, your understanding and ability to navigate those, to find opportunity, and to, you know, create value to others and therefore receive value, which is more than just connecting to someone on LinkedIn, right? Because there's a lot of really famous people that will accept your LinkedIn connection, but it doesn't mean they'll take your phone call. And that's the difference we're talking about. A lot of social capital development is something that we learn and are taught commonly by our family and our communities that we grow up in. It's not the only place. We also see those things happen in school, you know, at different levels from primary, secondary, a lot when you get to post-secondary education. And that's where I would argue that if we don't intentionally think about social capital creation— and it's like, once again, I'm going to pick on, you know, the, the top 10 universities in, in the United States. Those students, while they do have diverse student populations, mostly come from places that have taught them a lot about building social capital, and they're going to institutions that are great at teaching them about social capital creation. What about the people that will never get to those schools? Where are they going in terms of their education career? Will they graduate high school? Will they go from high school to a vocational training program? Does that vocational training program not just teach them how to do a specific job, but how to interview, how to meet people, and, you know, sort of network for the purpose of having opportunities later? That's really hard. We need to build those pathways. We need to focus on those pathways that are not sort of the, you know, into just the high-earning pathways, but it's everything from, you know, the middle skill, low skill groups, reaching into those communities so that if someone doesn't have exposure to it, how do we create it? And the most important, I think, we think we can do as business leaders is reach into all communities. So think about questions like, where are you getting interns from? I went to Davidson College. I have a lot of opportunity and privilege to have attended a great small liberal arts school, and you know, do I want to help interns and extend opportunities to my school? Yes, I do, because I have an emotional connection there, but one of the things I battle with myself, and I would challenge all of us to ask, is, is that the most important place for me to help? Should I get all the interns at all the companies, the apprentices, and the people that hopefully I can help create a trajectory trajectory for their careers just from the places I came? Or should I look around and say, hey, I live in Denver, Colorado. There's actually a lot of great community colleges here. I should be talking to some of those people. What about instead of just CU Boulder, which is the, you know, kind of the flagship institution for the Colorado University system? CU Denver also has amazing people that go there. Not as many people look for interns there. Maybe I should. Those are the questions that I think address this long term.

Yeah, and it creates a ton of opportunity. And at least in my opinion, I think, Taylor, I read one of your interviews where you share this opinion, right? Like capitalism is sort of the— or just entrepreneurship is a great way to create change because it's solving problems on both sides. I know there's a lot of other very nonprofits and stuff that are doing some really good things in the space, but I think entrepreneurs really underestimate the amount of impact that they can have if they're able to get a product that solves some of these problems going. You know, it's sort of the great equalizer. If there is a business model there, you will create change.

Yep, totally agree. I, you know, I believe that entrepreneurship is the greatest potential influence for change in society, and it's those points you made, the sustainability, of a real business model, and it's what that business does, and hopefully that it is building a product or service that makes this world a better place, not only just economically, but is considering impact to its community, to the suppliers that rely on it, its supply chain, the environment, you know, and as much as that can sound like, "Oh wow, impact investor talking." Yeah, no, I am an impact investor, but guess what? Like, everyone else is catching up. The Corporate Roundtable, which is one of the largest and most influential lobbying groups and think tanks around from corporate leaders and relatively conservative, in the last 2 years has come out making the statement, we need to care about all these things, because if not, our businesses will be at risk. And it's because I think there is a greater understanding that business stability and being good actors is going to create stronger communities and create more stability around government, create greater opportunities for education, both both going into the workforce and the fact that your workforce is constantly learning. So all of those pieces come together. And the best part is when one business starts behaving really well, it influences all the businesses around them because they know that they're gonna be held to that standard. That's the beautiful externality beyond just paying people that work at your company that then can feed their families, put the roofs over their houses, et cetera, is that it has waves and ripple effects throughout the economy when companies act in good response ways.

Right. And if you look at a lot of statistics, at least, you know, millennials now— and I know that's a pretty, a pretty broad term— but a lot of our younger workforce is going to value much more the impact that they're making than their salary and than any of those things. So it, you know, not only if you want to attract good people, it's not just about paying the most money anymore or giving the most benefits. It's about having a mission for your business that actually makes them want to get up in the morning, right?

Definitely.

So a couple of the things here, you know, one of the stats I read was up to, or at least the International Labor Organization was projecting, you know, there could be 200 million jobs lost. Throughout the pandemic and it's throughout the next couple of years where the effects are still felt. So where, what gets you the most excited in terms of some of the themes that people are attacking to build companies, to address some of the needs that these people are gonna have?

Yeah. So to call it a few companies that they're doing work that I'm really excited about. Yeah, one is a company called The Weather. They're based here in Colorado, led by a CEO named Chris Motley, very impressive founder, and they're focusing on the African-American community to build the connection between people looking for jobs that are developing into their careers and companies that want that diverse, you know, talent pool but are trying to figure out how to find find them and how to interact and how to really gauge who could be part of their companies long-term. And they're using a beautiful connection between those two. It's called mentoring. And so what they're doing is they're using these employee resource groups that exist at a lot of big employers, you know, to support whether it's African American community within that company or diversity within that company, et cetera, to say, you can help us find mentors for all of these young high potential people and we'll help create those connections and mentoring. At the very least, you're giving back to your community. At what we hope is also the outcome is you're going to find the people that you're like, that person's special, we want to hire them for our company. And the byproduct is that you just, you helped a whole group of mentees. That is building those connections to networks that companies are struggling to do. Um, that's about helping build social capital in a virtual world where, you know, being able to connect in person is much harder. Um, and it's about about, once again, I've said it a few times, but product design. They're thinking about how do you build mentoring that's not two people sitting down over coffee, which is great, but doesn't work right now. So how do you do that in a digital way that's meaningful? It's genuine. Like, that's something that gets me really excited. Um, another company that I'll throw out there that I think is really working on some cool stuff is called Tilt, T-I-L-T. They're focusing on, um, leave, uh, management for companies, people going on parental leave, other forms of leave. It's to say, we want to We're here to support an employee for their entire journey. This is not a short-term relationship. And guess what? We know that you're gonna have life happen, whether you're going out for parental leave, medical leave, what have you. And how can we— and Tilt is focusing on supporting companies— so leave isn't something like, "Oh gosh, I don't know how this is gonna go. Does this mean that, you know, this company doesn't value me? Is this a risk?" To what if that becomes a conversation of positive cultural influence and value to the employee. Like, hey, we know that life's going on, and hey, we're a company that complies with their laws in the United States around parental leave, and we're excited for you to go have that time that you need for your family, and we're excited for you to come back because we want you to stick around. It's companies like that that are creating solutions that will make our workforce a stronger, more inclusive one that will function better long-term.

Right, and a lot of people, you know, I guess whereas in the past a career would be maybe 1 or 2 companies, that number seems to be climbing almost on a yearly basis, right? So it's more of an all-encompassing thing than just recruiting somebody into 1 solitary company or anything like that. So yeah, there's a couple more questions in here. Just a small world, by the way, the weather, Chris Motley is an FI grad, grad.

Oh, I didn't know that, but that doesn't surprise me one bit. That's wonderful. Yeah, yeah, he's an intentional shout out, but glad it's one that connects all the dots. That's wonderful.

Yeah, yeah, he's a Chicago FI grad. So I guess, you know, we're coming up on the end here. For people that are— if you want to talk for a second about the Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator and also just the kinds of— I mean, we've sort of been talking I've been talking about this for the last 45 minutes, but I do know it's kind of a meta topic. Okay? There is— this literally is one of the biggest problems, if not the biggest problem of our time, is how we're going to go not just from a post-pandemic state to this new job market that we're going into, but it's all of the digital things that we've been talking about for years, the AIs, robotics, all of those things are being accelerated. So there's going to be a lot of friction. Created during the 2020s, right? So what are, you know, the types of companies that you're looking for, the things that are, you know, that you think some of the more novel problems that people are trying to solve that you've seen?

Yeah, so just to make sure I share it out there, where if you Google Techstars Workforce Development, you'll go straight to our program page, and anyone that's working in this space that has interest in applying, we're recruiting for our current class class, um, and applications close soon. They close on Sunday, uh, but we'll be selecting our class to invest in and support, and our program starts on November 2nd, but applications close on Sunday. Um, and companies that would be a fit for what we're looking for, um, is actually very broad. It's all across the labor market. So I define workforce development for us in the startup world as technologies and services that enable human potential through work. It's that broad for me. And that allows us to think about companies working on the education side that are leading into the career, you know, the career pathways and into the labor market, to companies that are actually connecting supply and demand. And, you know, at that point of a job creation or contract creation, lots of different formats there. And then also on the demand side of the labor market. So company solutions. Find the right people, hire them, retain them, help them grow with the company for mutual success. Um, instead of sort of saying, hey, I wish someone was working on this small thing or that small thing, because it's a broad range, this is what I'll say. This is what stands out to me. People going after system-level change because there's big parts of the system that are broken. So large ambition, system-level change. The second is a human focus, um, not technology or product for technology or product's sake. But solving a real problem that delivers value to a person or a company, ideally both. Um, and then lastly is, um, solutions that think about quality over quantity. Um, I think in this time of everything going virtual in the COVID world, it's easy to be like, well, we could do this thing and then just scale it to millions. You could. Um, I would argue, uh, think about Think about depth, depth of impact, depth of value created. Start there, then think about how it expands. Anytime you're able to create a lot of value, you usually have lots of opportunities to think about what's next, how to go bigger. If you're creating a little bit of value with hope that you can just do a lot of it, that's hard. It's really hard. So focus on quality over quantity in these solutions around the workforce especially.

That was great, Taylor, and thank you everyone for joining. We did throw the link in there to the Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator and the application link on FSuccess into the chat. Thank you everyone for joining, and Taylor, thank you. I learned a lot today as well. You know, I was kind of telling Taylor before that it's the, you know, future of work is sort of a broad term, but It really is the basis of our economy, and a lot of our society is based on the economy kind of working as an engine, right? So when those things get disrupted as they are now, it can create a lot of not only economic but societal and cultural issues. And it's that these are definitely problems that entrepreneurs should be trying to solve.

Very much agree. Entrepreneurs are our hope and our future. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thanks to you, Jonathan. Thanks to all of the Founder Institute. And, you know, we would be excited for anyone in the workforce development space to consider our program. And also Techstars has a broad array of 40+ other accelerators that are either, you know, focused across any space or have vertical focus. And just like Founders Institute, we put founders first. Let us know how we can be helpful. And most importantly, as we're all going out there and interacting, just give first.

All right, well, thanks everybody. We'll be sending out a video of this shortly, but thank you, Taylor. Thanks everyone for joining.

Take care.