Reimagining “How To Work With Me” docs as a wedge for creating a professional network

My chat with Kelsey Bishop, Founder & CEO of Candor

Oct 20, 2022

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I have gotten interested in teams trying to create new professional networks and rethinking how professional identities work on the internet. I’m working on a series of chats exploring that idea with different teams across the States and India. I’m kicking off that series with Kelsey Bishop, CEO of Candor.

In this conversation, Kelsey and I talk about :

My complicated first impression of what Candor does
Her story about finding culture fit at work
Reimagining employee user manuals and work identities
Using a consumer wedge to bootstrap a professional network
Blurring of lines between private & public for the younger generation
Cultural values as a job-hunting mechanism
Radical transparency around values in workplaces
Journey as a first-time founder

Most of the conversation is spent on getting a good grasp of her thinking around the strategy. It is still early days for Candor, but it was great to see Kelsey’s passion for employer transparency, finding a job aligned with one’s values, and rethinking the lines between public and private profiles at the workplace.

Sar: When I first discovered Candor, I went to the website, and my initial impression was that it was an internal workspace for “How To Work With Me” docs that many startups ask their employees to complete to help their colleagues better understand their work styles and personalities. Later, after reading the Forbes story on your funding news, I felt my initial impression was off. I learned a few things that I did not infer from the website! Firstly, Candor is a professional network. Two, it's external-facing and primarily for job seekers. I was surprised how I got it so wrong. I can’t tell if I judged too quickly or whether there’s a bigger picture where those two impressions fit together somehow!

Kelsey: No, you're not wrong! It's both. Why don’t I give you Candor’s backstory, and then I'll tell you more about the product?

I've been in tech for about eight years as a Jane of all Trades. I've done sales, partnerships, operations; you name it. My experiences fell into one of two buckets at the startups where I worked. The first bucket was fun workplaces, incredible teams, and an awesome culture where everyone challenges each other. The business might struggle, but everything works because the team is awesome. The other bucket is the opposite. The business could be crushing, but work was a struggle without a strong culture. It is hard for me to enjoy working at companies when there isn’t a strong culture fit. After I left my last job, I thought about how people at companies get to know each other and how job seekers learn about what it’s like to work at certain companies. For the most part, what happens right now is that we go to LinkedIn, look at people’s education and experiences, and leave knowing nothing about that person. You don't get a sense of their personality, what their values are, what they're excited about, things like that.

Sar: Right, or you pull up their profiles on something like Lattice to get to know colleagues.

Kelsey: Yes, exactly. You pull up their Slack profile and try to get a sense of who they are at the office, but it's tough. My question was, how can we be more authentic about our work personas online? How can we have authentic professional profiles that don't have all the BS endemic to LinkedIn?

Even more than that, can we use a platform like that to deepen our relationships with our teammates? Can we get to know someone in a better way before we meet them the first time? For example, understand how they like to get feedback. The big vision for Candor is to build a professional network and to take on Linkedin, which isn’t the right product for the next generation of workers, but how do we get there?

Essentially, it's about helping teams build deeper relationships and surfacing information about work styles and what our colleagues are like as people so that they can still bond in a remote world.

So we touch on both of the impressions you had initially. We offer public profiles, and we are building this next-gen professional network. The entry point is reimagining “How to Work With Me” docs as online profiles so that teammates can get to know each other.

Sar: Interesting. You bring up a bunch of pieces so let’s break them down. Let's talk about the first part of your vision first. The starting point is replacing Google or Notion docs, typically where “How to Work With Me” docs live in a modern workplace. I find the process of creating those manuals annoying. You're staring at a blank screen. It feels like writing personal essays for college applications! You look through a few of your teammates’ manuals to get some inspiration and structure for your own. Everything hinges on how many manuals get created and how many of your teammates end up reading them. Am I describing the problem correctly?

Kelsey: Exactly. People want the information, but as you said, writing it about yourself and taking the time to read your teammates’ docs is hard and takes effort. The problem entails getting people to do it. The harder part is getting people to do it thoughtfully.

Let me walk you through what a profile looks like. Candor profiles are comprised of prompts (we call them Takes) that touch on a few elements:

Who you are - fun facts, an intro video, your values, your motivations, etc.
How you work - how you like to get feedback, what gives you energy, etc.
Areas you’re growing in - what happens when you’re stressed, your fears, etc.

When you sign up for Candor, you set up your profile by answering some Takes for yourself. This is a shot from my profile:

After you write some Takes for yourself, you can invite your teammates to contribute their Takes on your workstyle by inviting them to Candor. People tell us that this product feature is where they feel the most seen. For some, it’s a really eye-opening experience to hear how their teammates perceive their superpowers and where they crush it at work. Here’s something a direct report said on my profile:

Sar: Wow, the profile looks fun and interesting. And it’s multimedia, which makes it more engaging. Having structured prompts makes it easier to write about yourself and open up. Are the profiles public URLs?

Kelsey: Yep.

Sar: Why make information meant for your teammates public? Writing about yourself for your teammates’ benefit differs from writing online for public consumption. The comfort level completely changes. These profiles are publicly accessible, but the intended audience is your coworkers. Do you see the tension there?

Kelsey: Yes, we have gotten this feedback, and we’re currently building out different levels of visibility for Takes (our prompts on the profile). You can write something public or for just your teammates, depending on what you want to share with whom. Your Candor profile is yours, so we want to give you full control over what you share.

For example, you might want to share your core values, your motivations, and your journey so far on your public Candor profile. We also have prompts like your epic work fails and areas you’re working on growing in – depending on your comfort with sharing online, these might be things you just want to share with your teammates.

Sar: When onboarding people, do you tell them what they are writing for their colleagues to read can be made public if they want?

Kelsey: It’s the other way around. Your Candor profile is public. There's probably some content that you don't want to be public – that content will be for just your teammates or just for you. We want to balance encouraging people to share broadly and sharing meaningful content with their teammates.

Sar: Ah, so it’s meant for public consumption by default. Why would companies care about public profiles? Are you selling to them?

Kelsey: We’re building towards being a network, prioritizing growth first. We want as many people to fill out profiles as possible, so today, Candor is free for all users. We'll sell to companies eventually with the idea that Candor can help in two distinct ways - hiring and employee retention.

First, we'll be able to connect companies and hiring managers to candidates that are a good match for their culture. Instead of going on LinkedIn and searching for a product manager, you can go on Candor and search for a product manager who aligns with your company's values.

Secondly, we can give companies insight on whether their culture is thriving and how they should pitch and screen new candidates to ensure they're aligned. On the flip side, we can also help companies understand how they can improve their work environment and retain their employees with a better culture.

Sar: I see. So initially, when I'm setting up my profile, it's just a website.

Kelsey: Candor is a platform with public profiles focused on authenticity. Today, it’s a website you can use to create a beautiful “how to work with me” doc or “user manual” instead of doing that in Notion or Google Docs.

Sar: I want to make sure I’m getting this right. Step one is to create a set of public profiles, which are effectively one-page websites. Step two is connecting those profiles and creating more intimate networks, which can be large (like LinkedIn) or small (internal workspaces).

Typically, there are public networks like Linkedin and private networks like Slack. You seem to work towards a hybrid model with external and internal connections. How are you thinking about combining open and closed networks? Why fall in the middle instead of taking a clear side?

Kelsey: It’s more about starting with a clear, free consumer-first value prop and using that as the backbone of growth towards a massive network. Slack is a great example: they went to market with a free, simple product for teams. A manager might have their direct reports download Slack because it is a better communication method. Later, the entire organization would convert into a customer because it was a better communication method. I think of Candor’s growth motion similarly - I think we can attract small, niche networks with a valuable product and then grow upwards with internal champions. With that growth comes a valuable network and a valuable data play.

Sar: Do you explicitly target employees at specific companies because you need to grow in clusters?

Kelsey: What's interesting is that clusters happen organically today. For example, a manager or founder will sign up and immediately invite their direct reports to create their profiles and share their working preferences. People naturally want to share Candor profiles with their teammates, so we see small networks happen almost immediately, especially within small companies. I think we need to do better marketing to employees at companies where we already have a presence. That’s on deck!

Sar: When you talk to early users, is it counterintuitive for them to use a consumer product and invite their teammates? It feels like a big mental shift. If I didn’t know about your vision to become a professional network and I just looked at the profiles, I would wonder if I’m supposed to invite my friends to say something about me!

Kelsey: Most of our early users work at startups. I've chatted with seasoned executives in the corporate world, and they look at this and are like, what the heck are you doing? But when you talk to new graduates who want to grow and view work as a fulfilling part of their life, it's a different mindset. They want to maintain their values at work versus viewing work and personal life as completely separate. I’ve also found that startup employees generally crave better user experiences, so they’re welcoming of the more consumer-y UI. We also use team-specific language to communicate that Candor is something you use at work. Like Linkedin, you use it professionally, but it’s a public profile page.

Sar: How did you come up with this specific approach? There are many ways of taking on LinkedIn, right? Why use the “How to Work With Me” docs as a starting point, and why have the strategy of starting with the consumer side and growing into the work use case? You drew a comparison to Slack earlier. My pushback would be Slack is still a private network regardless of how it grows top-down or bottom-up in an organization. Why start with public profiles if your goal is to sell to companies for hiring and retention? Are the public profiles just a user acquisition tactic to bootstrap a network to collect information on people and culture?

Kelsey: It happened quite naturally. When you think about expressing your true work self online, one of the clear benefits is helping your teammates understand how to work with you and vice versa. Titles, educational background, and many other pieces of information that take center stage on LinkedIn are mainly fluff. We’re groomed to talk about ourselves in those ways, but, ironically, in practice, they’re not that useful. This type of information exchange happened in person, at the office. Remote-first companies need to make that process accessible to those working from home or wherever they are. That might be why we’re having so much success with startups; they are much more likely to be remote-friendly.

For most companies, there’s a clear B2B SaaS approach, which is the case with Candor. It would be easy to sell directly to businesses. However, I think we also have a unique opportunity to go consumer first and thus benefit from a more cost-effective and faster acquisition path. Going consumer first is harder, but if you can figure it out, I think it’s a much better path to getting the data we need to build a valuable product for businesses.

Sar: Can Candor be used as a consumer product for personal use? What if I do not want to bring this to work or invite my teammates?

Kelsey: Yes and no. Building a delightful online multimedia profile that represents your authentic self is useful in and of itself. That said, at some point, I think users will get more out of the experience if they share that profile with others and ask for feedback. The goal of Candor will always be to find you happy at work – I am very motivated by that mission, so I hope our users will identify with it too.

Sar: Let’s talk about the second phase now. You want to create a professional network and help job seekers. Talk about the vision and progress made on this front so far.

Kelsey: We’re still fleshing out the long-term product roadmap with an eye on what our users want. We want to show value as quickly as possible by letting users create their Candor profiles and read their teammates’ profiles. Internally, we call this “single-player mode.” The next step is “multiplayer mode,” where users on Candor will interact with their teammates. I envision multiplayer mode as the most transparent tool for teams to share what they like to work with - everything from their values to their day-to-day working norms. This type of information will be invaluable for job seekers - you’ll be able to look at a company’s Candor page and get a sense of how you’d align with their culture and whether any managers on the team are hiring for roles you’re interested in. Hiring becomes a more open process - if you could see the ins and outs of a team before joining, you could make better decisions on roles to join and potentially find a life-giving role with teammates you love working with.

Sar: You talked about solving the matching problem between job seekers and companies through the lens of culture fit. Can you expand on what that means and your ideas for making it happen?

Kelsey: When you go on a company's website, the careers page usually contains a bunch of values that someone in HR wrote and doesn’t represent what a majority of the company actually values or how the team works together. How do you come to understand your own company culture? Instead of displaying core values created in a board meeting, why don't we aggregate core values that team members have added to their profiles? Candor could be the go-to place to understand a team’s inner workings and make this transparent to candidates.

Sar: Right. Companies want control over their external messaging. In the world you're imagining, companies have to accept more decentralized values and the judgment of their employees.

Kelsey: Of course, some companies might feel weird about this level of transparency. At the same time, we're seeing a shift with the next generation of workers demanding this type of information. They want to know if a company fosters a workplace that aligns with their values. Not every company needs to have this level of transparency. In the long term, I bet that companies that do will be more attractive to candidates, especially younger generations. Going consumer first helps because if your employees are on Candor already, it’s easier to take what’s on our platform and run with it.

We don’t want Candor to be like Glassdoor, where you can essentially pay to remove content you don’t like. Users have control over their Candor profiles, but companies are not people. When you say a “company” has control over something, you mean, in most cases, that the CEO, the board, or the shareholders have control over it. That’s not what we want.

Sar: But you can’t risk pissing off companies, right? Aren’t the companies important buyers of your product in the long run? Or do you not want job listings on Candor? Do you just want to help job seekers understand companies better?

Kelsey: I don’t expect that every company will be comfortable using Candor to share their values with the world at first. However, as the professional world evolves to be more remote-friendly, and as candidates demand increased transparency and look for values-driven company cultures, more and more companies are going to look for a platform like Candor to help them navigate the new challenges that arise from that.

I also think that the “user-owned” profile is important here. We don’t run into the same issue Glassdoor has of pissing off companies. Glassdoor has “company” profiles. We’ll have individual profiles owned by individual users. I think it’s fundamentally different when you start with individual profiles and content vs. company profiles and content.

Sar: Let’s switch gears and discuss your journey as a first-time founder. When did you realize you had something here and decide to go out to raise money?

Kelsey: I started working on Candor in February 2021, experimenting with messaging and a few landing pages to see if people were interested in the concept. After a few months, I chatted with enough users to realize that I wasn’t the only one craving more authenticity in my professional life, and I decided to go all in building an MVP on Bubble in May 2021. In August, I launched it on Product Hunt and was super overwhelmed with the response, so I decided to take a real swing and raise money. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to raise money - I didn’t have any experience pitching and wasn’t sure what to expect. It was like, “well, if I don’t take a swing, and people want this, I’m just being a coward.”

Sar: What about you learned pitching your company to investors about yourself, the market you are in, and the funding landscape?

Kelsey: I learned so much during my first round of fundraising. When I started my raise, I thought it was about business. A few weeks in, I realized that all my “yeses” came from people who believed in me and the problem space. Once I realized that my approach shifted a lot. In the early stages of raising, it’s much less about selling your business and more about selling yourself and the problem you’re working on.

It was also hard not to take the “no’s” personally. When people said no, it always felt like they were saying they didn’t like me or didn’t believe the problem was a real problem. I’m still working on this, but at the end of the day, fundraising is the lifeblood behind building the dream. I had to get over all the no’s because I knew the real fun would start once we had the money.

Sar: What's something you think I should have asked about?

Kelsey: I think it’s fun to mention what the world looks like when Candor wins - when people have a Candor profile instead of a LinkedIn.

I’m super bullish on a world where people are authentically themselves in every part of their lives. They can show up with all their gifts, edges, and quirks and be totally accepted and cherished at work. I think that’s the key to fulfillment at work - feeling like your teammates see you and belong there. Like you uniquely contribute to the organization’s mission and values.

I hope our kids think it’s crazy that work wasn’t fun one day. I hope the biggest thing people optimize for in their professional lives is finding purpose and belonging. When we have that, our society could reach a different level of consciousness. Today, people can be mindful and find purpose outside of work, but it’s not the norm to have it at work. Candor could help build that future. It’s a problem I’m personally so passionate about. I hope I get to spend the next ten years building it :)

Sar: Your perspective on bootstrapping both the network and the approach to solving job hunting challenges a lot of conventional wisdom around how employers operate. And I love that! Looking back on my first impression, I think it makes sense that I got confused. The website describes the first phase of your vision (building profiles), while the Forbes story discusses the second phase (creating the networks).

Kelsey: That’s right! We have a ways to go, but we’re really excited about what we’re building at Candor, and we can’t wait for the world to see it. Thank you so much for all the great questions, Sar! You’ve given me a lot to noodle on as we move forward from here.

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