Homeroom1000: Launching a Startup in a COVID-19 World
It was early March. We had originally planned to release Homeroom into the wild by the middle of the month. As the date neared, it felt strange, even inappropriate, to follow through. We had envisioned this time to be an exciting one — a celebratory exclamation point on years of heart and sweat. It quickly became apparent that people of all backgrounds were going to lose jobs, loved ones, and sense of agency in the chaos.
Meanwhile, the economy was tanking. Some of our largest investors put an indefinite pause on recent commitments. I started to suspect that my checking of headlines and Twitter was more twisted escapism than research. Simply put, it was not the March we expected.
An authentic opportunity
Yet, somewhere in our infinite scrolling of news and social media, we saw something profoundly encouraging: Founders sharing guidance on budget management. Work-from-home veterans outlining tried-and-true strategies for working remotely. Peers turning to peers for the new professional challenges they were facing.
If you’re new to Homeroom, two sentences to give you some context:
We’re building a professional development platform that is specifically designed for lightweight, peer-to-peer learning. We believe that while consistent professional growth has become critical, people need a new way to learn that realistically addresses the time and energy constraints of the modern worker.
Homeroom was built to make the exchanges we were seeing more valuable. We started to feel like this was, in fact, the perfect moment to step up and play our part.
Homeroom1000 and launching with purpose
To roll out strong communities and align our first steps with what we believe in, we’re excited to announce Homeroom1000. Here are the three pillars of the initiative:
1. We’re raising 1,000 months worth of Homeroom ($5,000) for the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund. We’ll match 50% of contributions towards this goal with our initial revenue.
We’re a proud, NYC based company. We want to do what we can for the city that’s given us so much already and finds itself particularly besieged by COVID-19.
This response fund is aiding nonprofit service providers struggling with the health and economic effects of the coronavirus. It is giving grants and loans to NYC-based nonprofits that are trying to meet the new and urgent needs that are hitting the city.
2. The first 1,000 members will get access to a special Homeroom1000 Slack community.
Each Homeroom community is for people with the same job description, and the first one is for product managers. Our hope is that a private Slack channel will provide a real-time outlet for urgent discussion. We’ll be circulating job postings and surfacing talented PMs for hire.
3. The first 1,000 members of each community will proportionally represent the racial and gender diversity of the US.
We believe in the power of diversity to facilitate better outcomes for businesses and the need for equity in the workforce, especially in tech. We think that even the “little guys” can lead by example.
On Monday, April 13th, Homeroom will welcome its first official community and feature weekly hosts like Michael Sippey (CPO at Medium) and Hunter Walk (Partner at Homebrew).While this first group will be made up of product managers in tech, we will have many more role-specific communities coming later this year.
We’re now accepting applications for all roles through homeroomtime.com and gearing up for launch. For the full Homeroom rundown, check out this other Medium article we wrote.
Wishing you and your loved ones both physical and mental health during these challenging times.
Onward, together 💪.
Erik
