Happy Sunday!
Welcome back to Founders Feature, a weekly newsletter all about the journeys of young startup founders.
For this week's edition, I interviewed Vivek Pandit, Co-founder of PeduL, a diversity recruiting platform based in the US.
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Here’s what PeduL is all about:
🏠 The Basics
The Problem:
Diversity not only has positive social benefits, but also drives business outcomes that are necessary for success, and corporate America is finally waking up to this. Currently, companies are not diverse enough, and they are all competing for the same talented diverse candidates because they are not looking to the source of this diversity, the universities. Additionally, companies can’t specify specific demographic traits they are looking to hire for on job applications, so they are left with whoever applies, a set of people usually with the same lack of diversity as the corporation itself.
The Solution:
We help corporations hire underrepresented talent specifically for internships and entry-level positions. We do this by working with the companies to create a scholarship application, in which they can specify exactly who they are looking for, e.g. female Latinx real estate associate, and we then use that scholarship as the means to source diverse talent from around the country. We deliver this candidate pipeline to the company, which then awards the scholarship(s), and can hire as many people as they want from the pipeline. Students know that they are applying for the scholarship, with priority consideration for the job or internship.
The Team:
We are 4 co-founders, Chisa, Kayla, Sayyid, and I. We’re a team of 6 working full-time, and over 10 people in total. Chisa and Kayla both went to Rutgers, have experience in Media and Journalism, and are great at connecting with people and making people feel seen. At Rutgers, they realised that their friends were dropping out of school because they didn’t have the money to stay. So, they started building the foundations of PeduL in their dorm rooms. Sayyid is our CTO, and he is known on the East Coast as the People’s Dev. He’s always helping people out and building side projects. I studied Economics at Brown, and I focus mainly on business development and external partnerships. I also do a lot of the fulfilment, working with all the students we’re onboarding.
🚀 The Journey
How did you come up with your startup/solution?
I grew up in Texas, and I was one of two Indian males in my entire school grade of 550+ students. I always felt a little different. I was privileged enough to have parents who were at home and invested in me, my education, and my career, and to eventually go to Brown University. As I grew up, I started meeting other people who had similar backgrounds and experiences as me, and we realised that students all over the country who look different, who grew up a little different, feel different, and don’t necessarily know how to value themselves and their potential. The problem is that society and corporations reinforce these labels, for example, by not recruiting from certain universities.
I was first told about Chisa and Kayla while I was in Dubai. My sister's roommate's mom's friend's friend happened to be a mentor for PeduL. He introduced me to Chisa on a zoom call, we started chatting, and I instantly fell in love with the team and idea of PeduL. At the time they were looking to pivot from being a pure scholarship platform to using scholarships as a mechanism to help people find career opportunities. I ended up joining the team as co-founder and we focussed on the pivot together, working hard to build our legitimacy in the diversity and inclusion space.
Why is this the right time for this problem to be solved?
Diversity has always been an issue and is a problem that should have been solved a long time ago. Now, however, is the time that the stakeholders who failed to realise this was an issue are finally realising it is. It took a lot of social pressure and tragedies such as police brutality for this realisation to hit, but more and more the business implications of a non-diverse workforce are showing. GenZ is the most diverse generation ever, and we are about to become the mass consumers in the market. If companies don’t cater to this, they will suffer. Beyond diversity, inclusion is essential to derive the benefits of diverse backgrounds, thoughts, and minds.
What is a recent success you are proud of?
The recent success I’m proud of is a personal one. During Covid, I was in a very mentally bad space, and a lot of things happened that contributed to this. Then I discovered being a creator and entrepreneur and that whole journey has now brought me to a position where I’m very, very happy. I took a leap of faith, started networking, and putting the energy out there. Now I get to work with an amazing team, have a podcast, the 501 Hustle, which I love running and get to meet with great people all the time.
What is a recent challenge you have faced?
When you start a company, you’re constantly caught up in goals, timelines, and visions, and that’s just not how time works in real life. Time is the moment of now, and you really have to learn to calm your brain down and not get too absorbed in all potential future events. Don’t overwhelm yourself with all the things you can and can’t accomplish. The struggle is learning how to think about and envision a future but live in the moment.
What do you wish you knew before you started and is there anything you would have done differently in hindsight?
If you’re going to release something and create something it does not have to be perfect before putting it out there. I’ve spent a lot of time on various projects not launching because I thought they weren’t good enough yet. Chances are it will only get much better by putting it out there and gathering feedback.
🧠 The Lessons
What is the best advice you have been given recently?
You don’t have to be a purely for profit or non-profit company, you can be for more than profit. Making money is great, but reinvesting into the community and watching other people succeed is just as great.
This helped me while I was going through a bit of a mission crisis, unsure if choosing either profit or non-profit would make me a good or bad person for it.
What advice would you give to other young founders?
Follow your intuition and your gut, but deserve to follow that intuition.
Make sure to go through a self-awareness process, constantly question yourself, learn the connection between your mind and body, and what emotions and people play a role in how you make a decision. Once you understand that, then you deserve to be able to follow your gut, even if you can’t explain why you want to make that decision.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned so far?
It doesn’t matter how smart you are, you will never do anything yourself.
You might have some incredible individual accomplishments, but whatever you do, wherever you make it, remember how many people are the reason you are who you are, and how many moments had to align for you to be where you’re at. Be proud, but stay humble, and never underestimate the power of the people around you.
✨ The Inspiration
Who inspires you?
My family inspires me every day. My mom and dad are my role models. My mom taught me how to talk and connect with people, and my dad taught me how to think and put two and two together. My sister gave me the quality of empathy and understanding people. I’m a product of my family, and I’m proud of who I am thanks to them.
What book do you think everyone should read?
Principles - Ray Dalio