We helped 100m job applicants across the world | Fountain | EO

How Fountain built hourly hiring for the global workforce

Fountain is the hiring layer for hourly and blue-collar work, the workers most HR software ignores. It began as an employee training tool, but the funded startups Ryu cold-emailed kept describing a different problem, hiring thousands of hourly workers with half of interview candidates never showing up. That pushed the company into high-volume applicant tracking and then enterprise, which required a new CEO. COVID opened warehousing and logistics demand, and half the business is now outside the US.

Takeaways

• Hourly hiring is Fountain's underserved market. Fountain helps large organizations hire hourly and blue-collar workers, a group most HR technology ignores in favor of knowledge workers. Customers hired almost 3.5m people last year, and half the business is now outside the US.
• A no-show problem forced the pivot. Ryu cold-emailed funded companies to sell employee training and kept getting no. What they described instead was hiring large hourly workforces, where only half the candidates who said they would show up did.
• Market size was the top objection. Fundraising was hard for a 22-year-old founder and his 19-year-old cofounder, neither Ivy League nor engineers. The number one reason investors said no was market size, and Ryu knew the gig customer base would run out.
• Early customers became Fountain's angels. Fountain's first customers were on-demand gig startups. Their CEOs and cofounders invested as angels and introduced the company to their VCs. Behr, then running the valet service Zirx and an early customer, was the first investor.
• Enterprise ambitions required a new CEO. Fountain knew it needed a leader who could run an enterprise motion, so it started a CEO search. Behr and Ryu wrote the values together, and Behr took over in the middle of COVID.
• COVID opened warehousing and logistics demand. COVID exploded demand from warehousing and logistics customers. SoftBank led the Series C with $85m and B Capital added $100m. Behr calls Fountain the biggest opportunity he has been part of to become a global public company.
• Keep cash in the bank, keep acting. Behr calls keeping money in the bank the CEO's number one job, with strategy and hiring coming after. He expects 18 to 24 hard months for entrepreneurs and says the eleventh attempt may break through.

From dorm project to hiring platform

1. The Social Network came out in Ryu's freshman year and convinced him that students with a laptop could make a difference.
2. He built OnBard, a self-learning education platform, because as a beginner he did not know what he did not know.