Why I want to help 10 000 refugees get jobs?
This post is part 1/5 of a series from the founders of Migrant Hire, where each of us explain why we personally want to help 10 000 refugees get jobs.
My co-founders’ posts:
In September of 2015 I was in Budapest for a weekend trip. This was shortly after hundreds of refugees were being blocked in a train station in Budapest. I decided to visit the train station, where there were still refugees present. They were then allowed to leave the country, but the situation was still pretty chaotic. I was curious to talk to some refugees and hear their story, but I felt too awkward and couldn’t bring myself around to doing it. In that moment, I made a vow to myself that I would do something to help refugees once I got back to Berlin.
I was at the time helping students get internships with a recruitment app, which gave me the idea to make a pivot, and take the solution to a new market. After researching the legality, testing the market and forming a team, I am proud to say that my team and I are on a mission to help 10 000 refugees get jobs in 2016.
The 3 main reasons why we will succeed:
Reason #1 Awesome team
Our founding team has the necessary backgrounds to succeed as a startup: Engineering, UX/UI, Business Development. A social entrepreneur is also on board, who has co-founded and been a part of non-profits helping refugees in Berlin. Rounding out the team is a community manager from Syria with a refugee background.
Reason #2 We are lean
Lean is one of those buzzwords floating around, which is why I want to give concrete examples of why I think we are lean. The keyword is that we haven’t made a single line of code before validating the market. (This was especially important because the market already was pretty crowded.)
I had a pitch at a Bosch workshop where I validated the two main assumtions: 1) Companies are interested in hiring refugees and 2) Companies are hesitant because there are too many barriers.
Time spent? 4 hours making a pitch deck.
To validate the refugee side we spread a text on Facebook asking refugees to send their practical information and a video presentation of themselves to my whatsapp. I was hoping for 10, maximum 20. Suddenly, the post went viral, and I found myself chatting with 75 highly motivated and highly qualified refugees, all at the same time!
Time spent? 1 hour making a text.
Even though we now have a concept, we are still lean, because we are not afraid to iterate. If the market, meaning companies and/or refugees, demands that we change our product, we are willing to do so. In other words we will not stop changing the product until we find product/market fit.
Reason #3 We have a business model
Aaaah, another buzzword… Entrepreneurs think of the business model canvas, and the 9 elements that makes up a business model, but the general public think of business models in terms of “how will you make money.” And this is actually what I will try to answer now.
A big problem is that the general public thinks a non-profit should not earn any money, meaning “have no business model”, because it is just a good cause. This is especially problematic in 2016, because everything happens online. Therefore it is hard to recruit and retain unpaid software engineers, because if they work unpaid for a startup instead, they can hold a large amount of shares. This causes many awesome projects to never reach their potential, to never find product/market fit, and ultimately shut down.
We are setting up a non-profit, but we have a plan to make money as soon as we can. We want to recruit the best and the fastest engineers, and we want to pay them (and the rest of the founding team). One way to “make” money is to get grants, however if you depend on it, you face again the problem of being too slow. Therefore we need additional revenue streams.
Our main revenue stream will come from companies. We don’t know exactly how, because we are lean. We don’t know what value proposition is good enough for them to pay for, but we will find it, because we are lean.
Standing in that train station in Budapest I felt helpless, because I didn’t know how I could help. Now I do. I want to help 10 000 refugees get a job. Why? Because I believe my team and I are fully capable of achieving this goal, and for this reason I feel it’s my obligation to at least try.
If you are reading this and thinking there is a way you can help our cause, please reach out. We are looking for introductions to German companies, donations and volunteers.
