>> Delari: so let's welcome Stephanie Brown, the CEO of GigsUp, to another episode of Innovation Fuel. Hi, Dave. Hi, Estef.>> Dave: Yes. Welcome back to Innovation Fuel, where we explore real decisions behind the building ventures, organizations and ideas that are shaping our communities. Today we're joined by, Steph Brown, the CEO of GigsUp, a platform rethinking how people access work and how organizations access talent. At a time when transitional employment models are being challenged and AI is reshaping a lot of things, including this space, Steph is building something really interesting, really exciting and that they're right in the middle of this shift. So before we get on with our show, I want you to think about this along the way. How do you build for the future of work when the rules are still being written? Steph, welcome to the show. We're so glad to, to have you here. You're a, friend, a colleague in the world of education too. But now you've started this venture a year ago, a little over a year ago. Gigs up. So how are you doing?>> Dave: Yeah, thanks. I'm so excited to be here with you all. And our worlds are colliding. It's amazing. Thanks for the great intro. yeah, so I started this business a year ago as you mentioned, but it's been sort of a three plus year journey of researching and really understanding what is missing. And, and really to your point, like the world is changing so quickly. What is our opinion on where things are going or our

hypothesis on where things are going? And without spoiling or going too deep into everything, I think it all began with this understanding that what's missing in the market are tools that focus on the humans and understanding the humans. So I'll pause there and I'll say that's that's sort of the genesis of where we began.>> Delari: so what did you find? What is the missing about humans?>> Dave: So if you look at a lot of talent marketplaces out there, whether it's indeed LinkedIn, Workopolis, and then you look at student networks, you look at career, assessments, you look at, you know, every part of the user journey, you find that there's issues along each one. So if we kind of deconstruct the user journey, you will see like at the, at the stage in which you're doing exploration, you're using career assessments. Well, a lot of them are actually unscientific. They're also fragmented. They're one dimensional. Some of them look at personality, some of the interests, some look at values, some look at but they're not doing it holistically. So that's sort of like I guess when I say, you know, we're not fully understanding the human, it's because we're not using the right tools to begin with when it comes to self discovery work. So a lot of my PhD research has been focused on that and trying to identify where the gaps are. So that's one part of it. Another part of it is that as you progress through the user journey, so going from self discovery into say career exploration, well the

tools that exist are also very fragmented. They're not centralizing insights on the jobs in a way that really makes your career decision making a lot easier. and we know from the data that people want to see things like their ROI on their investment for education on that job pathway, supply and demand metrics, along with like day in the life and what skills you need and whether or not it actually aligns with who you are as a human. So we fill that gap and then finally once you actually start from that place, you're able to complete the user journey. But actually having more personalized customized education plans and job placements, so that becomes sort of like the output and not the starting place. We don't start from job placement and work backwards. We start with a human and follow them towards the end goal.>> Delari: So can you explain this is what is the product, what's the platform actually and means we want to imagine it about what does it look like?>> Dave: Yes. So our tech is essentially think of it as is a dashboard that you log into, the very first time you log into it. Depending on whether you're a high school student, a university student or postgraduate, you'll get a slightly different user experience. So let's say you're a high school student, you log in and we would ask you to either upload your transcript or do a voice to text journaling exercise. And through that process we uncover data about you as a person. We take all of

that and then we match the person to career profiles and we tell them why it fits them. So all of that is all in one central dashboard. We have sort of a three step process of discover, match and achieve. So this discovery is all the inputs and the match is all the outputs of career profiles. And a lot like a dating app where you swipe left and right on, on matches, you do the same thing for careers. So ultimately it gets you down to a very focused match that you then want to set as your goal and then you proceed to the third step, which is the achieve. So in high school your achieve would be a clear admission plan to post secondary. So like what program, what high school subjects you need to take, what your grades need to look like in each of those subjects. And eventually that starts to kind of, as you get into university, obviously the plan changes because you care less about obviously admission and you care more about first job placement. So that's kind of the platform and how we sort of move users through the journey within it. I don't know. I'm happy to kind of explore any of those components if that's not clear.>> Delari: Questions before going to Dave, because. So how do you. I'm going to talk about that, data privacy because you asked me to upload all my information, my transcripts, all of them. So how do you protect data privacy? Second, how you can make sure that I'm actually uploading accurate document.>> Dave: Right. So a. For accuracy. I don't know that we

have the full answer for that, but definitely for the compliance aspect, we're supported by NRC irap and as part of being in their program, they support us through compliance. So we've done a pen test. There are a few things that we had to identify to create more rigor around protecting the data. And so essentially, so we do pen testing. We're also working through SOC2 compliance. So once all of that is wrapped up, I would say we'd be able to kind of come to the table with greater confidence that, yes, the tool is protecting the data. What I will say though is from day one we do have a data privacy, disclosure. We make it very clear that this data is not going to be sold on an individual level to anyone at any point in time. This is the. There will be aggregated data insights that are very valuable to academic institutions, which we will be packaging. But it will never be individual user data. So I don't know if that helps or, you know, we're in the. Basically, long story short, where it takes a little time to build up the compliance and we're on that journey in terms of making sure that we check all those boxes. Yeah.>> Dave: So I want to go back to the beginning because you said there's different, three different stages that these individuals can enter into your ecosystem. The stage of high school element, where they're, hey, I'm not quite sure what I want to do with my future. They come to Gigs Hub, you help them sort of articulate some pathways. And so

pathways would be identifying not careers, but are they also are you also helping them identify the strategy on how they go forward to meet that career. Meaning like what institutions they need to attend beyond that. Almond?>> Dave: Yeah, exactly. so if we talk about high school students, right, they kind of have two goals. They want clarity around the career, they're going to build a plan against and then they also want a more tactical plan to then reach that goal, right? So we kind of help them with both in the sense that the career matching exercise gets them the clarity on part one, what is the job that they're aiming towards. And then part two is we now tell you exactly the tactical plan to achieve that goal. So the courses you need, your grades, you need to get to, to get to which programs. We've also created a system that essentially matches you to the most likely institution you would get into based on your current circumstances and say like a, plan a goal setting to get you to say, ah, another institution that we know you might not be able to get to based on your current grades. But if you achieve certain grade targets, you increase the probability of getting in. So it sort of rank hierarchies like the institutions based on that. and then from there it's a matter of then saying okay, you got into the institution. And we would be in that conversation with the user and following them through their journey in post secondary as they take courses. Because what we've

also discovered is that students, as they take courses, they discover new things about themselves. It's not a one time decision career, like making a decision on your career is not a one time thing. So we want to keep a pulse on that and say okay, you took physics, you hated it, that's okay, you can still stay on this pathway. Let's give you a backup plan of different courses. Or you know what, maybe this changes the trajectory altogether and you're not interested at all in this career you thought you were interested in. Okay, what's the new plan? What do we have to do in our, in our, in our undergrad to like build towards a new plan. So really the thing that we're doing very differently than other tools right now is like we're trying to stay on top of the user's education journey and like capturing insights about what they're learning so that we can better direct them on career guidance.>> Delari: Thank you very much. I have another questions. What is your revenue stream?>> Dave: Yeah, so right now we are pre revenue. We just launched publicly about a month ago. So through just a few campus activations we grew to over a thousand users. So we have A lot of data coming in, a lot of onboarding, a lot of questions, a lot of feedback. So that's just the phase that we're in. It's very normal in a startup journey, I think, to be sort of iterating and learning from the customers. our plan though is we are B2B2C play. So what that means is we expect to be

generating revenue from both academic institutions and students, maybe their parents, depending on who's paying for their subscription. and right now we are sort of like testing out all these different strategies and channels to better understand where we're going to truly find that product market fit.>> Delari: so in this case, your major client will be education institutions.>> Dave: Yeah, they're purchasing it though for different reasons than we had originally thought. So they're not purchasing it necessarily. So when we first approach were approached by institutions or we're doing outreach, we thought that we'd be most interested in the career guidance aspect. because we know from the data that career guidance access is limited. Students have to wait long waits, long waits in high schools in Canada. And then the waits don't get any better in universities either. So the demand is high, the supply of career guidance is low. So we thought, okay, we can service this gap. But what we're finding at ah, least in the Canadian landscape right now is that that's not of highest priority. What is of highest priority is understanding the data around where do students end up, what employers do they work with, what professions and what skills they're deploying to then inform their programming. So there's interest in purchasing aggregated data, licensing rights to those insights. So that would be like one piece of the pie that we didn't necessarily

originally like plan into or thought could exist. but, but fundamentally for me, like what, who I care to service are humans. It's, it's students. So if we can find a way to actually be profitable and service academics while making sure that the humans come first, knowing that that's probably going to be a higher, I mean CAC right now for B2C is extremely high. So building a B2C company is nearly impossible these days. but again that's like who I built this for. So trying to find that balance. Yeah.>> Delari: so how about new immigrants? Because when newcomers come, they may lack some skill and they go to so many certifications and even maybe not be very good for them. So do you have any special, services for them or support?>> Dave: Yeah, I mean I would say like our tool is useful to Anyone at any stage of their career. The reason why we're so focused on high school university students, it's more so to create new habits versus breaking old habits. So we know like mid career professionals are so used to using tools like LinkedIn. So I mean I've had moms sign up for my platform saying they've been out of, you know, their, their line of work and they're looking for new pathways. I see this being useful for many different, you know, individuals. We've also had conversations with special abilities groups, and different work workforce deployment organizations. Like I think we can solve a lot of those gaps through this way of being very human centric and

gathering data about the humans in a way that actually them.>> Delari: Yeah. Dave, seems that you and I need to to spend more money on our kids and about the career from high school.>> Dave: It's always spending more money on our kids. But I, it's really interesting because again you're hitting them in multiple different stages and I think that's really the interesting element of about even if they're early stage high school, they're coming in late into this journey. They're moms that want to reenter the workplace. Yeah. Like it is this really exciting stuff on this element. But now when you look at this, your differentiator and who are the competitors that you're competing against out there? How are you?>> Dave: Yeah, yeah. So to be honest there's if I I'm just trying to pull up. Can you still see me? Okay. I'm just trying to pull up my summary of my Oh, I can't do that while I'm on this call. Okay. It's all good. M. Like I mentioned earlier on this call there's sort of four buckets I would say of competitors. Right. You've got call it job platforms or job marketplaces. Then you've got career assessments. Then you've got say like networks and then you've got internal marketplaces or internal platforms. And what I mean by internal are like they loot. They, they do a little bit more of what we're doing but they do it in service of one organization. And so and I could like there's to be honest, like career navigation and career placement. I mean it's a huge market,

there's a lot of competitors and you know I can name probably like 20 or 30 in each of those buckets. Right. It's just that if you look at, if you take a step back and look at each one, there are gaps in each one. And then you, and then you also recognize that there isn't an end to end M platform that's actually doing it from self discovery through to placement and then tracking the person longitudinally like no platform is doing that. and then in each one as I mentioned, there's like gaps. So I can go deeper into each one of those. But that's kind of like the high level view of it.>> Delari: So at this stage I understand that this is very early stage. What will be or what are your strategic alliance?>> Dave: Like who are strategic partners? Yeah, so to, to do the build we've actually had really strong partnership with bcit. We figured out a way to actually build this out in a very affordable way through partnership with them in capstone courses which I always recommend entrepreneurs to explore is like if you've got something, you know, especially in deep tech, you know, that's an interesting pathway. we've had a lot of support from them and we were able to raise non dilutive funding through my tax because of that. And then I would say, you know, right now I wouldn't say we have strong partnerships yet with academic institute institutions. Beyond that something that I'm focusing on building. we just sort of got to a stage where I think the product was good enough to

go to market with. So we're just at that inflection point where those need to be built. That being said, I have built a lot of partnerships through national accelerators which is an, you know, even though it might not be on the revenue side or you know, the customer side of things, it's been very instrumental I would say to like our build and us developing our go to market and distribution planning. so we've been in like five or six, five different accelerators now and I think we're in our six all serving sort of different purposes of our journey. so yeah, and then as I mentioned there's non dilutive partnerships meaning like my tax shred, nrc, irap. So being a part of that has been also help very helpful to our growth. That's really great.>> Delari: So when you're talking about this one. So I'm, I'm wondering what is the size of your organization at this stage, how many people you're working with, how you can because talents, finding talents and paying them, it will be very hard. So how you can manage it.>> Dave: I think as an entrepreneur at my stage you have to get very creative. like I mentioned, you know, going to BCIT is it was it's very nominal cost to build. My tax also covers 50% of my headcount, so I only have to self fund 50% of it. There's three of us on the team right now, myself and two others. so I think you know, there are very, there's a funding path outside of my tax as well to fat to fund students or new grads, things like

ah, ITC or new venture, I forget the exact term but there, there's different buckets out there. and then I would also say, you know, I've posted Jobs now twice for intern positions for the summer. In my most recent post at University of Waterloo, we received 478 applications, which to me sounds insane for a startup. So makes it really clear to me that the talent is there and that students are very like mission aligned with what we're building. and I've also had like probably about 20 people now over the last month ask me if they can volunteer or build some kind of capstone project through their school to help us. So on the one hand there's a part of me that feels like, oh, I don't want to take advantage of people like working for me for free. But I'm also working for free. And I believe that at some point in our careers and all, in all careers we do things for free to then get us to the paid situation. So a part of me is opening up, sort of figuring out what does that look like to have people who believe in our mission, who want to build some kind of a, portfolio or client work and do it in the most affordable way and then hopefully we gain enough traction that we're revenue generating and then can go back to that talent and say hey, like you were great at X, Y, Z, like join us. that's sort of my mentality right now or what I'm trying to figure out.>> Delari: That is really great. but I think that internship, I mean Steve and I use a lot of internships. Well,

it's perfect. However, the consistency of the quality as well, especially for you as a startup can be tricky. Right. So I just want to know, because a lot of our audience are entrepreneurs like you, they want to learn how you can have the quality of the work.>> Dave: Right. I mean to be honest. Yeah. Like there's been, so we've worked with bcit, great example we've had now, I think seven cohorts all been assigned different features of our platform. And I think of the seven there's probably been like two that were a Bit of a flop. and I think I kind of just accept that. But now I've also realized, like, okay, I got to put out volume. I've got to put. Instead of doing one or two a term, next term I'm doing four. Right. And I get really clear, and I keep the scope really tight, and I say, you know, this is what we need delivered by this date, and what can we reasonably accomplish in 12 weeks? And I think, because I have a head of tech who is sort of like my. He knows everything about everything, that he can also be on top of them and understanding if they're falling out of scope or falling out of line, and having those weekly updates. So he runs all of those. I don't. I don't run them anymore. yeah, that's been. That's been helped. Like, use. I mean, that's worked for us so far. And again, it's not, like, perfect, but I think it's a pretty. It works to some degree.>> Dave: I want to take this a little further because you talked about a number of assumptions that you've

made along your journey, and a lot of things change in those assumptions. And what I really want to get to the heart of is the assumptions that are changed. What's shifted from your original concept? Because I remember you and I talked about this a year ago, and then, what barriers have you faced in order to get this to market?>> Dave: I love this question, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about lately, because it's kind of the friction that I'm feeling right now. and I think it's not abnormal for founders to encounter this. Number one, I thought that you can have a great idea and a good team, and they'll raise money off of that. And I think the landscape has changed significantly. I think at one point in time, maybe three, even two years ago, that might have still been the case. But it's definitely not the case right now. which means, you know, you need money to build something. I don't care what anyone says about vibe coding and, you know, building fast and shipping fast. Even then you need distribution, right? And distribution costs money. Unless you've already built a personal brand and have tens of thousands of followers. So, I think the long story short is that I underestimated how important distribution is and how costly it is. and so now I'm having to kind of pause and say, okay, how are we going to get this message and amplify it as efficiently and as economically as possible? And I will say that we are in a unique time where yes, the market is

crowded and attention is hard to get, but also there's tools out there and ah, AI agents that you can build to really kind of elevate your, you know, one or two people on your team to be like the equivalent of 10. Right. So that's what we're, that's what. So that's what we're building and exploring now is like what are all these AI agents we need? Like what are we, you know, how are we going to build marketing content and just get, get get awareness out there and get as many users on the platform. And that was something I hadn't originally, I think planned into. and I've learned along the way.>> Dave: So Steph, we're thinking about the future now. You're going to make some decisions and what decisions are you making today that we may be able to check back with you in a few months to see where you're at?>> Dave: so right now we're in the middle of a pre seed raise. I would say, you know, I've had to think through that strategy and slice and dice in so many different ways. So hopefully by the time we reconnect, we've completed our raise. That's my goal. and doing it in like trick is. And the most non. Like I. Obviously you're diluting yourself but how do you do it by preserving the value of your company? I think that's where it's really tricky right now. and then I would say being able to have established a ah, self autonomous digital marketing system that ah, is building awareness about our existence and our offerings I think is my, my like number one goal aside of from

fundraising. So hopefully by then we have like a number of. We've grown our user base hopefully to 10,000 is ideally my goal by the end of this year.>> Delari: But your platform is free right now, right?>> Dave: It is, yes. It's a. So it's a freemium subscription. So we have everybody who's currently joined on the premium plan for free. The rationalization is we want people to be using it and seeing the value and eventually we will demote them back down to the, to the free version and hopefully they're incentivized enough to pay the$10 a month to subscribe.>> Delari: That's awesome. It's great. So I mean the marketing, it's going to be your biggest decision, but I want to know about your biggest constraint.>> Dave: M. my biggest constraint is me.>> Dave: Hey, you're honest>> Dave: but I mean, yeah, so I Think, like I am, I am an ideas person. I'm a researcher. Like, I have clear plans and it's just there's not enough hours in the day for me to do it all. and so that's what I mean by I'm the constraint. But I'm trying to figure out ways, I guess, to leverage technology to be able to be more efficient and tackle more of those things that I know need to get done. and I think this is like every founder's dilemma.>> Delari: that was great. Thank you, Steph. Thank you, Steph.>> Dave: Thank you, Dave.>> Delari: That was another episode of Innovation Field.>> Dave: So before, and Steph, before we wrap up today, how can our listeners reach you? How can they learn

more about this platform? let us know how we can connect with you.>> Dave: Yeah, so our website is ww.joingigsup.com we have an Instagram handle called join gigsup. We haven't posted yet. Again, ah, we're working through all of our, online content as we speak. but that should launch very soon. You can also follow gigsup on LinkedIn. So if you look up gigsup, you'll see our green little icon. I think it comes up first in your search. So, yeah, I think. And again, join. Join the platform. It's free. Test it, use it, give us feedback, tell us what you like, you don't like. and we want to help as many students as we can. It's sort of a two way dialogue that we want to enter into with Canadian students.>> Dave: Love it, Steph. Thank you very much. Love it.>> Delari: Just wait, don't go anywhere.>> Dave: To our, to our listeners out there, if you found this insightful, please share. Review it, get it out there, get our podcast out there, Get Steph Story out there. What a great idea, What a great concept. Let's help her reach that 10k of users, out there. Thank you very much.>> Dave: Thank you.