Candor (joincandor.com) is formally coming out of stealth and announcing $5M in funding with investment from Contrary Capital, Afore Capital, Worklife VC, Village Global, Global Founders Capital, Banana Capital, Andrew Farah, Joseph Quan, Ellen DaSilva, Alek Koenig, and 25 other angels.
Candor is on a mission to help people find belonging at work. The company believes true job satisfaction in tech comes when you can be yourself, in a team where you are included and accepted. But getting visibility on how a team really works together is hard. Tools like LinkedIn and Glassdoor are cluttered with spam, virtue-signaling and fake or toxic profiles; they don’t provide the data needed to make important culture-fit decisions. The end result for employees? A high-risk scenario where people are making major career decisions without the proper data. We believe there’s a better way, and so we’re building a new kind of professional network.
“We’ve been living in a world devoid of human-to-human depth in the professional world for the past 20 years,” said Eric Tarczynski, Founder and Managing Partner at Contrary Capital, “Glassdoor and LinkedIn have been standard bearers of this era, which doesn’t exactly set a high bar. Kelsey and the team are reinventing this with Candor, building a humanity-filled product for people who care about knowing their colleagues on a personal level, all while improving themselves as teammates. We’re excited to back them as they lead the way for the next generation.”
The Great Resignation, rise of remote working, and creator economy boom have empowered millennial and Gen Z tech workers to rebel against traditional notions of ‘professionalism’. They no longer see flexibility, culture fit and belonging as ‘nice to haves’ and they aren’t settling for the traditional hiring process (a gamble weighted in favor of employers). They want to know whether they’ll belong in a prospective team. And they want this insight in one place at their fingertips.
Candor is focused on how people work, not where they’ve worked. Where other networks show you job titles and work history, Candor shows you how someone is in Slack, whether they’re a morning person or night owl, and how they like to get feedback. Candor puts transparency, authenticity and personal growth first and eliminates the guesswork in culture fit and helping people find where they belong.
“When you’re early in your career, it really doesn’t matter what role you’re in if you’re on the right team,” said Kelsey Bishop, Founder and CEO of Candor, “If you find the right culture fit, get yourself in the door and you’ll figure out how you can uniquely contribute once you’re there. It’s really not about the job – it’s about the team and the culture.”
Eventually, people will use Candor to determine who someone is professionally and LinkedIn will seem out of date, less useful, and less authentic than viewing someone’s Candor profile.
