Why This Repeat Entrepreneur Based Frank, a Software program Platform for Employees. And Does He Suppose Chicago Is a Good Place for Entrepreneurs?
Logan is one other a kind of of us that I can’t recall particularly how or why we met, however I’m so grateful for his friendship. He’s somebody I actually take into account a ‘good egg’ as we’ve loved the tales of his personal entrepreneurial journeys and strongly held opinions on Chicago espresso. I’m excited to shine the sunshine on Logan and Frank, a software program startup targeted on employee empowerment. Thanks Logan!
Hunter Stroll: Frank, your present startup, is a platform for staff to arrange as a way to shield or advance their rights. After I learn this mission assertion I feel ‘unionize,’ however perhaps that’s only a tactic, not a requirement. Are you able to assist me perceive the distinction?
Logan LaHive: First, the issue… The unimaginable imbalance of energy in workplaces is driving continued acceleration of earnings inequality, which together with local weather, is a prime situation dealing with society as we speak. I don’t profess to have the answer — simply consider that staff having a stronger voice of their workplaces is an effective place to start out. There are various types of employee voice, and differing approaches to exercising it — so you could possibly actually say that unionizing is a tactic… but it surely’s clearly essentially the most established, strongest, and legally-protected path to employee energy.
Different choices for staff will be taking collective motion, solidarity unionism, forming unbiased unions, worker useful resource teams (ERGs), guilds, becoming a member of a employee middle, new improvements/concepts, and many others. All of which have advantage, and could also be finest in several circumstances. Being trustworthy, unionizing is fucking onerous. Deliberately. Many many years of company lobbying, republican coverage, and close to non-existent enforcement of labor legal guidelines has fairly efficiently established roadblocks to staff exercising their proper to unionize.
However unionizing has clear advantages — past bettering wages, advantages, and office situations — it provides the assets and backing of skilled representatives (the union) for collective bargaining, wherein the employer is legally obligated to take part and negotiate in good religion (make your personal evaluation of “good religion”).
Our mission at Frank is to offer staff with instruments not solely to have a voice of their office, however to make sure that they’re heard. Our product is purposefully constructed to pursue the tactic of unionizing. We construct organizing software program for unions and labor orgs — a customizable and personal platform for Organizers to assist staff all the best way from curiosity / onboarding by way of to submitting union authorization playing cards. So, whereas personally supportive of any and all staff searching for to enhance their office situations, we spend our days targeted on offering higher software program to unions enabling them to enhance effectivity and accessibility of union organizing.
HW: However on the identical time we’re seeing a number of tales about new segments of staff searching for to unionize (corresponding to Amazon). What’s your tackle the potential right here? Are we going to see a brand new technology of service and commerce staff turning to unions? Will these identical teams each formalize for segments like engineers?
LLH: Sure. Subsequent query.
The developments and knowledge are fairly clear. Union elections are approach up (NLRB), unionizing is extremely widespread — with folks below 35, assist for unions is equal to marriage equality and legalization of weed (Gallup), and practically 50% of staff within the US would be part of one if given easy sure/no probability (MIT). Employees are mad and not keen to take a seat idly by being spoon fed “we’re household” bullshit from bosses making 350x greater than they’re, doing layoffs over zoom from a yacht.
It’s a certainty that issues are and can change… How briskly? What is going to unionization charges in personal workforce be in 2025? 2040? I don’t know. Like talked about beforehand, employee energy can tackle many types. For most individuals, after they say or hear “union” they consider one cookie-cutter sort establishment… however the actuality could actually be extra a mixture of escalating assortment motion (demand letters and walkouts), unbiased unions (Amazon Labor Union, Dealer Joe’s United, and many others), worker-led union organizing (Starbucks Employees United), extra Employee Facilities, and many others. (and sure, I’m deliberately not throwing DAOs or web3 within the combine right here as simply doesn’t but deserve implied parity).
For anybody studying this, should you work at an organization with 100+ folks, there’s 98% probability that at the least two of your coworkers are actively discussing unionizing. However like I stated, it’s onerous, and it should turn into simpler. I’m no coverage wonk, nor do I put a lot religion in our present political panorama to enact sustained change (regardless that you’d actually anticipate higher ROI on the $Billions that Labor has funneled to Dem politicians over previous few many years). So a honest hope of mine in constructing Frank isn’t that we’re proper, it’s that we will be a part of rising an ecosystem or neighborhood of parents constructing instruments particularly for employee energy (LaborTech).
HW: Frank is enterprise backed. I’m going to imagine that your funding conversations right here had been a bit completely different than your final startup. What number of instances did you get referred to as a socialist?
LLH: It’s been attention-grabbing. Frankly, elevating capital to work on this downside is and was privilege. Straight cis white man from background in tech/startups, who ran an accelerator program so has a few years of relationships with VCs, and elevating preseed within the yolo period of 2019 (rip). Constructing instruments for unions is actually not a class or product that the majority VCs need to exist, not to mention see develop. I’ve heard many quick and onerous passes. Lot of individuals I’ve recognized for a few years actually aren’t returning emails the best way they used to. Countless anti-union tantrums, delivered with the boldness that solely a VC who had a single private interplay with a union 7 years in the past may muster. Quite a lot of confused, raised brows, “Wait, aren’t unions dangerous?” then a passing reference to Jimmy Hoffa.
What I do discover fairly humorous is simply what number of contrarians have the very same response. How private opinions instantly cloud this subject, however what number of new classes are evaluated with some marginal mental curiosity. Most likely a correlation right here with why there was extra enterprise funding for golf tech than ladies’s fertility till very lately…
Look, socialists hate enterprise capital, and enterprise capitalists hate unions. However constructing new tech to attempt to tackle main issues in a big class (Labor) requires $. It requires valuing the labor of the crew we rent to construct it, to assist our companions (unions) that use it, and to put money into frequently making it higher. We didn’t have entry to union funding, grants, or baggage of money that fell off a truck. I attempted, and I self-funded for most likely longer than cheap.
We don’t aspire to be enterprise backed, to be a mark-up, or to chase the headline of a valuation. Nor are we searching for to advance a political agenda. We’re working in an area the place, traditionally, funding has been sparse. So I’ll take some photographs alongside the best way, however hold head down and keep targeted on mission we all know to be deeply significant, and on delivering worth for our companions (unions).
HW: After we first met you had based Stomach, a B2B2C loyalty/retention startup. There have been various comparable firms fashioned across the identical time — I feel a byproduct of cell apps and companies beginning to need extra knowledge on their prospects. What’s one factor you had been proper about and one factor you had been flawed about that essentially impacted the trajectory?
LLH: When beginning Stomach in 2011, yeah, we had been monitoring one thing like 15 firms within the Loyalty house. It regarded extra like a market map than a aggressive panorama slide. Most had been in SF, principally early stage, some producing buzz out of YC or 500 Startups, nearly totally ‘check-in’ sort apps. We in a short time outgrew all of them, and inside a few 12 months it was clear there have been 3–4 key rivals.
I feel that with time, the issues we did proper and issues we fucked up get clearer with perspective, however tainted by fading reminiscences compressing themselves into tidy narratives.
Early on, one thing we completely did proper that helped propel us shortly was spending a LOT of time in shops with prospects (small enterprise homeowners), and deeply prioritizing what they wanted to see inside their 4 partitions moderately than what we needed to be stated about us in Techcrunch. Many rivals had been constructing cool new issues, that felt sizzling and buzzy… like, they had been cell solely merchandise at a time (2011) the place lower than half of a small companies prospects had good telephones. And the POS (point-of-sale) in all markets outdoors of SF had been antiquated, closed programs, that the homeowners didn’t need touched as a result of final time somebody tried so as to add a brand new SKU the “3” key stopped working for six months.
So, we put an iPad on the counter, buyer dealing with, and enabled shoppers to sign-up or use Stomach with our app or a bodily key-chain card (QR code). Enterprise homeowners cherished it as a result of it created 100% addressable viewers — all of their prospects may simply enroll and use it — so that they promoted it. And it created a digital billboard on the highest worth location in a retail retailer (POS) which we used to market on to the companies prospects. It was our flywheel. We had been capable of intensely give attention to promoting to enterprise homeowners, they usually drove all client acquisition from inside their shops.
As soon as rising shortly, and pulling forward of rivals, I feel we misplaced monitor of whether or not the race was value working. Being so targeted on development, market growth, hiring, fundraising, I satisfied myself and others that dominate market share would allow us to ship XYZ, to “be a platform” 
, and develop share of pockets. Laborious to select only one factor I used to be flawed about, however, as we speak’s reply: The choice to function stand-alone outdoors of POS (point-of-sale) moderately than constructing core POS meant we had been a function. There was one thing so core to the companies operations — it took funds, may clock-in staff, course of all SKU/transaction knowledge, and was required to be utilized for each single transaction… and we had been sitting close to it, however we weren’t it. We had been pushing a rock up the flawed hill.
HW: The final two years have seen an acceleration of ‘tech startups will be constructed anyplace’ and naturally, intense debates about distant work. You led TechStars Chicago for 2 years (2017–2019) and have been linked to the native scene there for a fairly some time. Has Chicago over-performed or under-performed your expectations over the past decade as a house for startups? Any predictions going ahead?
LLH: I don’t know. Chicago VCs and all of the establishments spun as much as promote Chicago tech will say it’s over-performed, and can quote bunch of random stats they gathered in a survey or a Pitchbook article just like the MOIC of Chicago enterprise investments. I don’t know what MOIC is. I regarded it up a couple of instances. However actually couldn’t care sufficient to recollect. Or, I hear in regards to the % ROI from Chicago investments being prime decile due to decrease entry valuations, as if that’s one thing that’s engaging to founders…. “Hey take a look at me, my midwest valuation acquired you a greater return! Cool!”
Of us in Miami will say Chicago is chilly, Enterprisey, no vibes, and yolo miami bro. No comparative knowledge, simply pumping the hype / meme marketing campaign.
Every tweet storm or weblog put up about Metropolis A vs B, “Prime 10 Hottest Locations to Begin a Startup”, “Is Boise the New Austin?” I learn them realizing the overwhelming majority are biased narratives with a self-serving objective — a politician selling their metropolis, a founder making an attempt to draw exec expertise, a VC check driving their new geo-concentrated LP pitch… Actually, I get irritated momentarily then simply transfer on. Others can waste cycles debating it.
I do know there’s every little thing wanted to start out and construct an excellent crew and firm in Chicago. There are some markets that provide benefits vs others, and a few geos finest suited to startups in particular industries. However distant and distributed groups are right here to remain, and I’m nonetheless studying to successfully lead a distributed crew. So, no, no actual predictions — simply that I’m fortunately staying put in Chicago and making an attempt to consistently adapt with new norms.
Thanks Logan!
