Starting Speak_
It’s a new year, and I’m embarking on my grandest professional adventure. I’ve started a new company called Speak_ with my friend Andrea Guendelman and I’m joining as Co-founder and COO! 🚀
Speak_ is a new, inclusive step in the hiring process for employers who value diversity. Through free, cohort-based courses, we prepare underrepresented talent for interviews at top tech companies, while collaborating with employers to attract and identify incredible talent.
We named the company Speak_ because we bridge the “fit” gap by teaching job candidates to speak the language of their potential employer. And because it’s time for underrepresented voices to speak and be heard because they represent the future of the world’s population, every company’s customer base, and every workforce.
Moving Fast
Andrea and I have known each other for years — her past company, BeVisible LatinX, was in our portfolio at Backstage Capital. When she approached me about productizing and scaling a marketplace of branded training programs, I was quick to invest through Make Studios and start building. I’ve experienced first-hand how transformative cohort-based courses can be, and using CBCs to address diversity in tech was a super compelling prospect to me.
In just a few months, Andrea, our third co-founder Samantha Fisher, and I have retained enterprise customers like Amazon and Merck and landed some new customers at various growth stages like GoDaddy, Robinhood, Bonusly, and Labelbox. We’ve operationalized running 200-candidate, monthly cohorts. Now, we’re expanding our product offering to create an amazing end-to-end interview experience for talent while reducing the resources required by hiring teams.
We’ve raised a $1M pre-seed round co-led by Precursor Ventures and The Venture Collective and some badass angels like Isaac Saldana(Memo, SendGrid), Gagan Biyani (Maven, Udemy), Wade Foster (Zapier), Adam Gefkovicz and Tariq Meyers (Canvas), and Katelin Holloway (Seven Seven Six). Oh, and another thing that blew my mind, since he’s had a huge impact on my work, was recruiting Eric Ries (Lean Startup, LTSE) as an advisor. 😎
My Past & Future
Speak_ is the culmination of my career to date — working to create value through diversity, building startups, designing a product and brand, investing in the underestimated, and growing and leading a team. What I love most is actively solving big problems. Underrepresentation in tech is the biggest, most impactful problem I’ve found.
In my work, I start from the belief that the underrepresented — those who identify as women, people of color, LGBTQ+, disabled, veterans, immigrants, and anyone who belongs to a group where their population to representation ratio in tech (as talent, venture-funded founders, or investors) — are qualified and critical for getting the best business results.
To paraphrase something Andrea said recently, the companies of the past see having diversity as the cost of doing business, while the companies of the future see not having diversity as costly to their business.
If you believe, as we do, that diversity is strength, join us in achieving our mission to help everyone feel welcome to reach their full potential.
Get Involved in Speak_
👩🏾💻 If you’re a software engineer, apply.
👋🏼 If you’re interesting in joining our team as a Program Director, apply.
🕵🏼♂️ If you’re hiring, partner with us.
💚 Give back to rising talent — become a Speak_ Community Leader.
🎯 If you work with tech talent, let’s collaborate!
