Introducing the Fall 2020 Cohort of Humans in the Wild
Meet the 16 founders building the Future of Work
Humans in the Wild is a program for experienced entrepreneurs looking to build their next big thing. The name “In the Wild” stems from a pivotal point in a founder’s career when they are about to embark upon their next entrepreneurial journey — and we’ve created an environment and community to speed them along. In this 100-day program, Human Ventures provides the cohort with a proprietary curriculum on early-stage company building, strategic advice from the Human team and the cohort Investment Committee, connections to experts in Human’s network, and a rich, peer community of experienced founders — all to get ideas from zero to one.
Our last Humans in the Wild program in April 2020 had a focus on health and wellness. We’ve shared the highlights from that cohort here. Our second cohort focused on building the Future of Work has officially begun! We are excited to introduce you to the founders who we are partnering with. They are building companies in the following areas: new work environments, lifelong learning, redefining the resume, and worker wellbeing. TechCrunch recently shared more about our thesis within these areas of opportunity in The Future of Work is Human.
Markell Baldwin brought the ultimate trifecta: design thinking, experience as an engineer at one of the most future-leaning companies — Tesla — and a history of leading in Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. This combination positions him well to build Resonance: a talent marketplace that develops and supports underrepresented ethnic minorities in their early career.
Lisa DeCarlo & Lisa Shalett have a combined 40+ years in the financial industry at firms such as Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. Leveraging their experience serving on corporate boards, they are the brains behind the organization Extraordinary Women on Boards. They are developing a concept currently called “TBD” which reimagines retirement for professional women.
Winson Wong is a builder and operator with experience ranging from management consulting to leading business development at Twitter to co-founding Leap Venture Studio. From his personal and professional experience, Winson brings an astute attention to culture building. Winson is building Peppercorn: a team relationship management tool that fosters, measures, and guides team engagement and trust.
Throughout her career, Manon DeFelice has used her law school and business credentials to stand up for the rights of women and girls. She has been leading the flexible work revolution and believes that flexible work that equally balances work and life is here to stay. Manon founded Inkwell, which allows companies to tap into diverse candidate networks at scale by leveraging referrals.
James Knupfer has lived the problem he is solving for. Even as a successful and accomplished corporate executive, his career opportunities were limited by only having a high school diploma and recognized that the traditional methods of evaluating talent prevent capable candidates from landing jobs. His solution to this problem was to build Candidly. Candidly accurately verifies software developers’ programming skills, before they apply, and instantly matches those skills to available positions.
Maddy Nguyen’s extensive experience in talent leadership at high-growth consumer tech companies like Uber, Facebook, Snap, and Instacart gave her unique insights into a new way to align recruitment and management of talent. Maddy is building Talentdrop: a talent management system that bridges the gap between recruiting and HR, for companies who want a holistic approach to talent.
Suchit Tuli has always been obsessed with time. Whether it be in strategy roles at The Advisory Board Company, RubiconMD, and JPMorgan or his time in the venture world, he has focused on how to best use one’s time at work and has built products to streamline critical business processes. Now is the time for him to launch Quantime: the world’s first self-scheduling calendar that reserves time for modern professionals and teams to get work done.
Alfonso Carney & Georges Clement brought an incredible package to the table: an established founder of mission-driven companies, experience working with people seeking loan assistance, and life-long friendship. Their combined experience inspired them to start Enrich. Enrich aims to reduce the racial wealth gap by supporting high-achieving BIPOC students with job placement and early career resources.
Alex Chumbley & Aravindh Dorai each bring years of experience building new products. They also both have the strategic and operational mindsets to launch new companies from their roles at Microsoft and in McKinsey’s New Ventures division. They’re building right in their strike zone (product!) by starting Opul. Opul connects tools in the enterprise stack to surface relevant activity from your team, wherever you’re working.
Emma Harris & Melissa Tran have worked together since they joined the founding team of GuavaPass, a fitness class marketplace that they grew across Asia and exited to ClassPass. Emma and Melissa are passionate about the future of women in the workforce and believe that addressing the childcare crisis is at the heart of this mission. They’re leveraging their marketplace experience to launch Kiddo, an employer-sponsored platform connecting working parents with on-demand childcare.
Richard Hill & Ryan Sydnor embody founder market fit. As engineers and leaders, they have both led teams that have launched products that have positively impacted people’s health, education, and finances. After experiencing incredible growth at companies with strong feedback cultures like Bridgewater Associates, they were frustrated in most other environments where constructive feedback was hard to come by. That’s why they started Grow. Grow is making feedback in the workplace happen — easy, high quality, and honest.
About Human Ventures
Human Ventures is a business creation platform, comprised of a venture fund, studio, and enterprise agency. We invest in ambitious founders who are building in what we call the “Human Needs economy.” Human Needs encompasses products and services that address material human problems — specifically those in the areas of health and wellness, the future of work and community. If you have any questions about Humans in the Wild, reach out to Elise King, the Program Director who leads the program alongside Evan Cohen and the Human Ventures team.
