Insights from WorkerTech Founders — building products for a fairer future of work
Hear from our founders on how to reach your target audience for user research & building a WorkerTech business as a non-technical founder.
What does WorkerTech mean to you?
Nat Whalley, CEO and co-founder of Organise defined it as:
“Anything that gives workers more power. For us it’s giving them the tools, network and the confidence to make changes happen in their workplace. And that’s much more scalable with technology.”
When we talk about the future of fair work, we believe the people who stand to benefit the most from the rise in WorkerTech solutions, are those in lower-paid and precarious work, those who in Louise Marston’s words are, “often left out of Future of Work discussions.”
One reason we have found this group consistently underserved is that there is often a disconnect between those who have lived experience of the issues, and those who have the technical know-how and resources to build a business.
If this resonates with you, this resource is here to help.
We want to demystify what WorkerTech means and bridge this gap. Since we first partnered with the Resolution Foundation in 2016, we have invested in 10 WorkerTech companies doing just that.
Below we’ll explore a few case studies from WorkerTech teams, covering how they approached user research with the workers they wanted to help, despite not working in the industry themselves. We’ll also hear from two solo founders who joined the programme without any technical experience. Neither of these things should stop you from being a successful founder, and we hope their advice helps you take your business idea to the next level.
How to conduct meaningful user research with your target audience
Insights from TaskHer
TaskHer is an online booking platform that connects modern homeowners to a highly-skilled, proudly professional community of tradeswomen. TaskHer was founded by Anna Hernandez and Paul Moynihan, who were frustrated about not being able to find a tradeswoman for jobs in their home. Paul tells us more about how they landed on an idea outside of their professional experience:
“Anna is a keen interior designer and would do a lot of work on our property. When a tradesman would come to our door, and it was usually a tradesman, they had a habit of talking to me instead. In DIY terms I’m about as much use as a glass hammer. So we thought it would be great to try and find a tradeswoman. We found it incredibly difficult to find someone, and when we looked into it we started to realise the scale of the problem — but obviously neither of us had personal experience of it.
We thought that the most important thing to do first was to talk to tradeswomen, which is what we did. We interviewed loads of them about their journeys, and heard fascinating stories, as well as some pretty shocking stories.
The next step was to build a panel of advisors. So far, we’ve got three amazing traders who are advising us on our journey, what we’re doing and the product we’re building. They’re able to give us insights from their day to day lives which is fantastic.”
Insights from Tendo
Tendo is on a mission to make frontline work a safe, dignified and prosperous place to earn a living. Their technology encourages upskilling and loyalty by equipping employees with a portable proof of work, also nudging managers to create jobs worth keeping. The founder and CEO, Will Ross, started Tendo while working in a restaurant in SOHO, since then he has worked in a whole range of sectors to really understand his users’ pain points and make the platform as relevant as possible.
“We did some building there and created a simple screen with some skills and hours. My colleagues at the restaurant started using it, but engagement was low-ish. We had to think about what other visceral moments in the worker’s experience can we all build around and without just releasing something trivial that would work for just one type of operation. We wanted to be relevant across sectors.
I ended up working in a warehouse in Enfield, and that opened my eyes to night work, as well as the 12 hour shifts starting at 6.30am. We started to think about how we could capture this experience from a worker’s resilience perspective. That isn’t necessarily skills, but the ability to work at night, the ability to work in fridges and freezers.
Most recently I worked in Pret a Manger. They have a pretty impressive machine in terms of the amount of footfall they get. It was interesting to see the kind of systems they have below the shop floor in terms of, in the kitchens, doing the coffees. What kinds of things were operating procedures and what other things just happened through teamwork.
For us, it’s been about toeing the line and ensuring that what we’re putting on to the screen actually has a viscerality. We want it to be tangible in the real world, and ultimately we will win or lose a user based on relevance and whether that key screen is shared. For peer to peer sharing, the benefits of Tendo have to immediately relate to something which is part of the day-to-day experience of doing their work.”
Advice for solo founders without in-house tech
Insights from Upskill Me
Upskill Me works with young people and students aged 13–19 to help them learn skills, make connections and gain knowledge so that they can thrive in whatever future career path they want to do. They help people make informed decisions about which careers are in growth sectors, pay conditions and different roles. Founder and CEO Lucy Cranwell-Ward shares her advice for being a solo non-technical founder in the early days of building your business.
“Being part of the BGV programme is really helpful because you have a community of like minded founders, and you don’t feel like you’re by yourself — which is a really hard thing to manage when you’re just starting out.
When it comes to tech, in the early stages of my startup, I found freelancers — people who were interested in tech for good but who weren’t ready to quit their job to join full time. I would pay them a monthly fee to get their involvement.
This allowed them to dip their toes in the water without having to fully commit, and gave me a sort of co-founder in the role — someone there to bounce ideas off, which is especially important from a product point of view.
Having that ultimate tech co-founder or CTO is basically impossible early-on, unless you personally know someone. Instead you may have several people in that role, the goal then becomes to find people who are passionate about the problem from the product side, who can help you make these key decisions. You don’t need to find that perfect person who is going to quit their job tomorrow to join you. Think of it as a fluid journey — and that works, it gets you from A to B.”
Insights from Earwig
Earwig helps tradespeople find good jobs (and avoid bad ones.) Harrison Moore founded earwig in 2017 based on his experience working on construction sites. While he had personal experience of the problems construction workers face, as a solo founder with no in-house tech, he had to outsource the build of his MVP. He worked with graduates from Founders and Coders, a UK-based nonprofit that develops training programs for web-development, guided by core values of cooperation, inclusion and social impact. He shares some advice from his experience here.
“I worked with some recent grads of founders and coders called Yalla Cooperative, for over six months in 2019 on my first minimum viable product (MVP).
As is the case with so many naive founders, my MVP ended up becoming a maximum viable product, as I kept cramming more and more features into it.
Yalla were a pleasure to work with and I’d highly recommend working with them. However, if I could give myself any advice back then about approaching them, it would be to make sure that the MVP spec I’m taking is as concrete and as detailed as it can be, and that it is not bloated with features.
Having a lean, well defined MVP spec will make conversations with developers more productive, quotes more accurate and timeframes more predictable.”
No matter your personal experience, or professional background, there are plenty of different starting points for a WorkerTech venture. Here are some other resources you may find useful in building your business:
- Imaging Better Care Systems — how to design accessible and inclusive workshops, by Lydia Nicholas, doteveryone
- Methods for human-centred design, from the Design Kit
- The MOM Test, by Rob Fitzpatrick
- The Basics of Recruiting Participants for User Research, from the Interaction Design Foundation
- Recruiting Participants & the Legend of The General Public, from Usability.gov
- How to start a startup, by Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator
- Getting informed consent for user research, from gov.uk
- Seven Founder Lessons on Running a Tech for Good Startup, from BGV
Receive investment for your WorkerTech venture
For investments at the very early stages (pre-product, pre-revenue), check out BGV’s 12-week Tech for Good programme (applications are open until 9th Jan 2022). To ask us questions about the application process and what we’re looking for, sign up to one of our virtual Q&A sessions before the deadline!
For investments at the later stages, head over to Resolution Ventures’ website for more details.
This series is brought to you by Bethnal Green Ventures in partnership with Resolution Ventures, the venture arm of Resolution Foundation, a think-tank focused on improving the living standards of those on low-to-middle incomes.
