Ladder: Building the Professional Community Platform We Wish We Had
Announcing our new mobile app and $3.7 million in funding led by Forerunner with participation from Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six
When COVID-19 hit last year, millions of college students across the country were sent home in a frenzy with no job lined up, no idea what remote work meant, and no sense of community. I was one of these students. Without deep networks or years of experience, we were left with little direction or support. I was caught off guard by how the pandemic disproportionately affected young professionals, but not surprised. I mean, existing professional platforms like LinkedIn weren’t exactly built with our generation in mind.
In the next few years, 46 million people in Gen Z will start their careers. The future will be built by us, and yet, most of us don’t feel equipped to build it. This problem, exacerbated by the pandemic, just didn’t sit well with me.
So we went to work to help our classmates and peers get back on their feet. Ladder started as a mentorship program that connected 500+ students with industry mentors (shoutout if you were part of MentorMatch), then launched a newsletter to share remote work opportunities and resources to 75,000+ subscribers (extra shoutout to all the OG Remote Students community members), and is now a community platform and mobile app with tens of thousands of members. As a community, we’ve shared over 100,000 conversations, posts, and threads. We’ve helped refer each other to our companies, picked each other up when we were down, and met some of our best friends.
With Ladder, we’re building the platform we wish we had when we were in school. We’re rethinking what it means to be a professional platform and rebuilding all the core components from the ground up — the feed, your profile, your communities, everything! If you go on Ladder today, it looks like what you would get if Reddit, Twitter, and LinkedIn came together and had a baby (in the best way). You can join professional communities, consume high-quality career content, engage in fun discussions, land your dream job, and form meaningful relationships with peers and mentors.
Ladder features three core pillars:
- Communities: You can join communities with thousands of peers based on industries, roles, and interests that matter to you.
- Content: Ladder communities are filled with high-quality, social career content that range from opportunities and resources to debates and AMAs.
- Connections: Let’s be honest, those 500+ LinkedIn connections don’t actually mean anything. On Ladder, connections start in the communities and flourish through Events, AMAs, Group Chats, and Coffee Chats, a tool that handpicks the best people on Ladder for you to meet.
At Ladder, our mission is to democratize access to career growth. And community is one of the most important aspects of growing and being successful in your career. It doesn’t matter what you do or where you’re from, you deserve to have a community for wherever you are at. Ladder is where you can find those communities, explore content, and make connections for every industry, role, interest, or career stage. Ladder is not just a job board or online resume. It’s where the next generation can be their best selves by making career growth more inclusive and community-driven.
We’ve been around for about a year as a web app, and today we’re excited to launch our mobile app on iOS so that you can take Ladder on the go for all your discussions, chats, and events. And for all the green bubbles out there, don’t worry, our Android app is just around the corner.
We wouldn’t be here today without the support of our amazing team, partners, and especially YOU, our Ladder fam! We’ve closed $3.7 million in initial funding led by Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Pear VC, and top angels like Harry Stebbings, Elizabeth Weil, Tony Xu, Josh Buckley, and Josh Elman. We’ll be using this funding to grow the team, create better tools for communities, and build the best professional platform for our generation.
Lastly, I wanted to shout-out and thank the entire Ladder team. To those who have been with us since the beginning to those who just joined the team, none of this would have been possible without your tireless dedication towards our mission and product. I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished together, and we’re still only at the starting block. Belicia, Jamie, Michael, Arthur, Dustin, Gareth, Jonathan, Kevin, Albert, Chris, Shane, Amanda, and Peter — you’re all the real MVPs.
We have a real shot at taking down the old and dated incumbents like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, and “I’m happy to announce” that you can be part of this vision too and never hear those words again. We’re a team of hackers, founders, builders, operators, and overall fun human beings who care deeply about democratizing access to career growth. If this resonates with you, message me on Ladder and come join our rocketship 🚀
