From The Classroom to The Valley

Last year my wife and I were struggling grad students, and to top it off, I’d lost my Visa sponsorship and we had a baby on the way. Thanks to the STARTUP class at The University of Minnesota, our business savvy, and a great group of mentors, it’s a year later and we are an emerging recruiting startup, alumni of San Francisco’s Founder’s Space, with a small, dedicated team, and a full launch coming this year. This is our story, and the story of our app, Rakuna.

From the first days of my career I knew there was a problem with recruiting.

While working for Boston Scientific as a project manager, I co-developed a recruiting app for the iPad and won the Mobile Hackathon competition.I eventually left that project behind to pursue my Masters in Medical Devices Innovation at the University of Minnesota, but it wasn’t long until crafting a solution to recruitment’s problems consumed me once again.

January of 2015 was a tough time for my wife, Ngan, and I. When I quit my job in Boston I lost Visa sponsorship, and to pursue our business goals we would wind up selling everything from our car, to the television, to old clothes. For a time, I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag, commuted on a bicycle, and we didn’t have health insurance for months while Ngan was pregnant.

Cozy bedroom

She pulled me into the STARTUP class, a course that empowers students to reach potential customers and refine their business idea. We reached out to an interviewed over 30 campus recruiters and 70 students and confronted one of the biggest issues in present day recruiting: the disconnect between offline and online experiences. We knew we were on to something when after talking to over 35 recruiters from 30 companies, more than 50% claimed there was no good solution out there that addressed this problem. A majority explicitly asked for a campus-specific tool, and we were quickly inundated with emails and calls from companies (some very large companies, like Best Buy), asking for solutions. The dissatisfaction went both ways, students reported feeling as if they were falling into a black hole of resumes, without a personal connection to potential employers.

It was from these conversations we began conceiving our own idea for a startup: a product that would make the campus recruiting process easier, more personal, and more effective. We came up with the name, Rakuna, which means effortless in Japanese.

Our idea was good, the market was responding before they’d even seen a prototype, which only encouraged us to put our noses to the grindstone and make something viable. The lessons of our Lean Startup class were crucial here, our idea wasn’t necessarily original, it was born from market demand, and we try to stay lean by validating our ideas through customer development process.

Final deliverables for Minnesota Cup 2015

Less than two months later we had a prototype and entered the Minnesota cup, the largest statewide business competition in the country. 1,300+ companies competed in 2015. We were confident from Day One, but entered the competition in the spirit of learning and testing the water. Soon we were in the semi-final round, the top 60 companies, and brought two new mentors on board — HR industry veteran, former CEO of Jobs2Web, and current Director at Virteva — Ken Holec, and Rick Brimacomb, a venture capitalist turned early-stage startup advisor. Founder Brimacomb and Associates. I still remember Rick’s feedback vividly: “Trong I’ve seen a lot of business plans and slide decks that are mediocre, and you know what? The way to stand out is to make it look like hollywood branding. You want a Hollywood cover, well designed, visually appealing, and with a great story to connect audience emotionally.” We took all of their advice to heart and advanced to the final round: the top 18 out of 1,300+ companies.

I remember my pitch that day very well. I’d practiced it dozens of times, and gone over every detail with our advisors — I was ready, but there was something I felt I needed to disclose to the judges. “As of this morning,” I said. “We learned we have an opportunity to go to one of top incubators in San Francisco and we think that’s where we should go.” The judges were cordial and thanked me for my honesty, but reminded me that this was still the Minnesota cup, meant to support Minnesota business. I understood their point, and we walked away with 3rd place in our category, and regardless of our place, the experience and connections made at the Minnesota Cup were incredible.

An inspiring founder’s story

It was time to head to San Francisco, and to Founder’s Space, but I took my time, stopping in every National Park between Minnesota and the Bay Area to take photographs and decompress. One morning in the Badlands I got a call from Steve Klick, a judge from the Minnesota Cup and entrepreneur who turned his mother’s entire life savings into a successful exit. We had a great talk about business, work ethic, and vision, and I was humbled and thrilled to hear to that he was interested in offering us some funding.

With Steve’s help, and the lessons learned at Minnesota Cup, we were able to get our first true MVP (minimum viable product) up and running. While our time at Founder’s Space integrated us into the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and taught us how to bring a product to market, the first thing we did was take it back to Minnesota. We wanted to test Rakuna out at career fairs and recruiting events. It was just an MVP, but we were a hit. One company executive walked me around an event, introducing me to other companies, and I realized we weren’t just creating customers, we were creating advocates.

I’m tremendously proud of Rakuna, what we’ve accomplished so far, and I can’t wait for the future. And at the end of the day there’s one thing that truly set us apart: The product gives recruiters the ability to have 100% engagement experience with a candidate. Think about the current solution, paper and pens? iPad kiosk stations? You send recruiters & staff to a campus to build relationships and get top leads. The worst experience is wasting a quality candidate’s time having them fill out paperwork, or type on a tablet. We simplify, we put it in the device you already have, so it will fit in the conversation with the candidate, and it happens naturally. While they exchange information they have the app at their fingertips to capture the information. That’s a 100% engagement experience, you don’t see it in any other solution.

Now, our focus is on making the mobile app (iOS) and web app ready for mass market. We’re building our team, and working hard through our sales cycle to acquire customers and prepare for a full launch this September.

The journey from idea, to product, to business is a long one. It requires patience, hard work, and dedication, but it is also among the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. But there are a couple things about growing a startup, about translating an idea into practice that don’t get discussed enough: luck, and gratitude. I would never take away from our vision or our work, but we feel so lucky to have met the advisors, mentors, and investors that we’ve had the chance to work with, we feel so lucky to have come from a Minnesota ecosystem that was so supportive and conducive to new ideas, and we’re lucky that we get to work on something that means so much to us everyday. In that same vein we are thankful — thankful for the great minds that have mentored us and supported us, thankful for the communities that have welcomed us and rooted for us even when we have moved on or changed locations, because when it’s all said and done, anyone can have a great idea, but it takes a team to make ideas reality. So to everyone that’s helped us along the way, that continues to support us, or plans on helping us in the future: Thank You!