Closing the talent gap and mitigating bias in hiring with Tigran Sloyan from CodeSignal

Recycling is one facet to solving the climate crisis, but most of us are doing it wrong. Today on Found, Becca and Dom are talking with Rebeca Hu, the CEO and cofounder of Glacier, an AI robotics company that is building robots to accurately sort recycling. They talk about how many of us are wish-cylers who hopefully throw non-recyclables into the bin and how Glacier’s robots are sorting the recycling and making sure all of our recycling mistakes are corrected.

They also talked about:

• What it takes to train an AI-powered sorting robot
• What the reception has been like in recycling facilities
• How the robots are tracking the kind of waste we’re creating as they sort
• How Rebecca told this story to fundraisers who have very likely never stepped foot in a recycling center. 

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Applying for government benefits is a slow, tedious process that often leaves applicants in limbo for several months.  Advocate looks to help. Today on Found Becca and Dom are talking with Advocate’s founder Emilie Poteat, the company that helps Americans engage with federal benefits programs through its technology-enabled services platform. In this episode they discuss how the Advocate team is using AI to automate advocacy and get the wait time for people seeking aid to nearly nothing.They also talked about:
 

• Where Poteat ultimately found fundraising success
• How the government has reacted to a small startup seeking to automate such an embedded bureaucratic process
• Why AI is the best tool in the technological shed to work with the mass amounts of rules and data required to navigate the social security system
• How the team is implementing the security measures needed when dealing with such sensitive information

(0:00) Introduction

(4:16) the status quo of applying for government aid

(8:56) Automating government services

(13:13) using AI to automate advocacy

(18:29) Finding the right investor fit

(24:13) Hiring for a social impact company

(30:00) Collaborating with government agencies

(32:00) Host discussion

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Do you know what brand your bedsheets are? Probably not. Today’s guest Ariel Kaye has been working to change that with Parachute, a DTC bedding and home goods company. Kaye started Parachute in 2013—the hayday of DTC brands. She joins Dom to talk about what it was like building as a solo founder while she’s established a well-known brand and expanded beyond bedding. 

They also talked about:

• Why parachute hasn’t raised as much capital as you might think
• How Kaye’s branding expertise has driven the company’s identity
• Kay’s best advice to avoid burnout and be the best leader possible as a solo founder

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This episodes dives into the massive web of the wedding industry with Shan-Lyn Ma, the co-founder and CEO of Zola. Ma talked about why she decided to launch the business after trying to buy a gift for a friend and realizing that wedding registries were still living in the past. Ma spoke about how the company navigated changes in the digital and competitive landscapes over the last decade and how the company powered through the pandemic's impacts on the industry.

(0:00) Introduction

(3:33) Creating a better wedding planning experience

(8:45) Building in the wedding industry

(13:45) Inclusivity in the wedding space

(18:35) Personalizing wedding planning

(23:11) Adapting to the pandemic

(33:08) AI-generated thank you notes

(43:00) What's next

Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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Is it time for the resume’s reign to come to an end? Tigran Sloyan is the co-founder and CEO of CodeSignal, a skills assessment platform used by many tech companies to hire engineers based on their engineering chops rather than their keyword-packed resumes. In this episode, Becca, Dom, and Tigran talk about how traditional resume-based hiring perpetuates biases and limits opportunities for individuals without extensive networks or prestigious credentials and how skills assessment lead to more equitable hiring. They also get into the CodeSignal team’s plans to go beyond assessment to skills development, how AI will play a role in building out these courses, and the way Tigran thinks about equitable hiring on his own team. 

(1:32) Solving the "talent problem" in hiring and skill development

(4:55) Math competitions to MIT

(10:42) Resumes, skills assessment, and AI in the job market

(14:50) AI's impact on jobs and learning

(20:05) Personalized learning with AI tutoring

(24:47) AI tutoring platform for education and career development

(28:57) Personal growth as an entrepreneur

(32:42) Strategic hiring 

(37:08) Company culture, transparency, and AI development

(40:35) AI tutoring platform and its potential impact on job requirements

(42:34) Tech industry skills training and apprenticeships

(44:16) AI-powered tutoring and personalized learning

Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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Not many businesses start with a seemingly incurable case of Bacterial Vaginosis but today’s guest, Beatrice Dixon, found a company and a cure all in one. The Honey Pot is a plant-based vaginal wellness brand that was co-founded by Beatrice after she launched by selling her products at hair shows. On today’s episode, she tells Becca and Dom how those hair shows lead to the Honey Pot hitting shelves in Target.

They also talked about:

• How Beatrice knew it was time to stop bootstrapping
• The importance of finding investors who understand your mission and the intentional culture of your company
• The downside to having a fiercely loyal customer base
• Trusting the process and making decisions with the your consumers in mind

Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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It’s hard to remember a time when newsletters weren’t flooding every inbox but today’s guests were on the forefront of bringing easily digestible news directly to their audience. Today on Found, Becca is joined by Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, co-founders and co-CEOs of theSkimm which is a digital media company, dedicated to succinctly giving women the information they need to make confident decisions. They talked about how they’ve navigated the digital media industry for over a decade, how they pitched this to investors when they were new to the game, and the importance of building a team that aligns with your vision.

They also talked about:

• The importance of having a direct line to your audience and the benefit of building on your own platform, not on social media
• Their grassroots marketing in the early days
• How one thing they nailed from the beginning is having a unique voice. 

(0:00) Introduction

(1:35) being on the forefront of millennial media companies

(6:08) the power of email marketing

(8:35) the early days and bootstrapping

(14:07) Not fitting the silicon valley mold

(17:34) the co-founder relationship

(23:11) Leadership styles and growing a company

(29:31) Prioritizing growth

Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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Gut health might be having a moment on TikTok but Ben Goodwin the co-founder and CEO of Olipop knows first hand the monumental impact a healthy microbiome can have on your mental and physical health. Today on Found. Becca and Dom are joined by Ben to talk about how he led the gut-healthy soda brand to amass $200 million in gross sales just five years after their launch.

They also talked about:

• How the team prioritizes access to the product in low-income areas and food deserts
• Fundraising and pitching to CPG investors
• The importance of health and wellness companies to do research to back up their products claims
• The key to changing consumer behavior

(0:00) Introduction and two truths and a lie

(2:12) Olipop introduction

(5:42) Researching the microbiome

(11:34) The industrial diet in America

(15:03) Transitioning from research to product development

(17:49) Product nostalgia and marketing

(20:29) Market share in the beverage industry

(23:26) Olipop’s 200 million dollar year

(25:44) Targeting food deserts

(27:36) Time management as CEO

(31:06) Fundraising and pitching investors

(33:32) What’s next

(36:03) Host commentary

Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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Grab your spoon and a carton of milk because today on Found we’re talking to Magic Spoon co-founder and CEO Gabi Lewis. Magic Spoon creates cereal flavors that play on our nostalgia for Fruit Loops and Cocoa Puffs with a grown-up high-protein twist. Dom and Becca talk with Gabi about how he and his co-founder prioritized product-market fit and found investors who didn’t think cereal was dead. They also talked about:

• What Gabi learned from his previous startup Exo which made cricket-protein bars and how he’s changing his leadership style at Magic Spoon
• Transitioning from being a solely DTC brand to in-store retailer and how he’s learned to manage buyer relationships and store-to-store drama.
• How meticulously they develop new cereals and how they’ve incorporated customer feedback.

(0:00) Welcome Gabi Lewis

(1:45)  Magic Spoon TLDR

(3:38) Innovating in the food industry

(11:40) Managing DTC and IRL retail

(24:00) Acquisitions and competition

(28:15) Entrepreneurship, product development, and leadership evolution

(35:32) Outro with Becca and Dom

Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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On today’s episode of Found, Dom and Becca talk to Markus Witte, co-founder of Babbel, a language learning app that had been operating since 2007. Babbel has become one of the most prominent language-learning apps but their first product was essentially just a vocab game and they quickly discovered that a multi-modal way of learning will always be more effective. Markus also talked about why he decided to step down as CEO and take on the role of chairman and how all four co-founders have worked together to stick to the original mission of Babbel even after nearly 20 years. 

They also talked about:

• Being a very early adopter of a subscription business model
• The struggles of fundraising in Berlin in 2008 and how to operate intentionally lean
• How the company has implemented AI tools back when AI was still machine learning.
• Building a team that is deeply rooted to the original mission and how Markus developed the skills of an empathetic leader

Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity and Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each

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