Deborah Gladney, 34, and Angela Muhwezi-Hall, 32, are part of Small but growing club of multimillion-dollar Black female founders.
The sisters are the creators of QuickHire, a recruitment platform that connects workers with skilled trade and service jobs. In November, QuickHire raised funds 1.41 million dollars in a funding round that went beyond regulation, making Gladney and Muhwezi-Hall the first black women in Kansas to raise more than $1 million for a startup, according to AfroTech.
That’s quite a feat for any entrepreneur, but especially when you consider that black women startup founders received only 0.34% of the $147 billion in capital invested. venture capital investment in US startups in the first half of 2021, according to Crunchbase.
When the sisters started the business in March 2020, Gladney was pregnant with their third child and Muhwezi-Hall was hospitalized after contracting Covid-19. They weathered the uncertainties of the pandemic, witnessed racial unrest during the George Floyd protests, saved to invest $50,000 of their own savings, and experienced violations. while fundraising. The beta version of QuickHire launched in the fall of 2020, and they released the finished product to the public in April 2021.
Today, QuickHire matches more than 11,000 job seekers with jobs at 60 medium to large service industry companies in the Wichita, Kansas, and Kansas City metro areas. During the Great Resignation, QuickHire data is also demonstrating how businesses must provide better jobs for the working class – jobs that pay well, steady hours, health insurance and careers future careers – if they hope to fill the void.
CNBC Make It spoke with two sisters for their best career advice and how it helped them launch their first $1 million business.
‘Never let anyone see you sweat’
Gladney’s biggest career piece of advice came from a former boss: “Never let anyone see you sweat.”
“There is so much power in not giving other people power knowing that they have won you over in every situation,” says Gladney.
Gladney says the experience of pitching QuickHire and raising money is not without experiencing bias and violations — situations where “people said or did something there, if we showed them to them.” they have with us, I think they succeeded in stopping us.”
Gladney recalls pitching to investors and feeling as though they had “all the cards against us.” They applied to participate but turned down the accelerator programs “and it left a bad taste in our mouths. The reason why we were turned down was just not very clear. And it left us with a bad taste. wonder, is it because we’re black women doing this?”
It’s an all-too-common scenario for women and founders of color in the world of VC, where the majority of investors are white men. “We felt that we had to come to the table with more revenue or more validation than our counterparts, because we knew we wouldn’t be able to grow if we didn’t make it comfortable. than for [investors] to take a chance with us,” Gladney said.
Gladney and Muhwezi-Hall nearly gave up trying to get into an accelerator program until they had a motivating meeting with TechStars Iowa executives. They joined the accelerator, and their development took off.
Gladney says she relies on a few core people, including her sister, husband, and father, to deal with the frustrations of being a Black female founder in the tech space.
“They took it all from me,” she said, “but it helped me get out there and fight the world.”
‘You have to grow’
Muhwezi-Hall says the best advice she’s ever received is to “grow”.
“Sometimes in life, and especially in career, for you to find opportunities to advance and broaden your horizons, you have to get out of your comfort zone,” she says. “You have to take a chance yourself.”
As for Muhwezi-Hall, the seeds for QuickHire were really planted in 2017, when she was a college and career counselor at a Los Angeles high school. She has plenty of resources to offer those tied to college, but very few supplies for students geared toward skilled trade or service jobs. Generally 108 million peopleor 71% of the workforce, work in the service sector – why isn’t there a better way to connect them to steady careers than filling out a paper application?
“This is an idea we’ve been harboring for so many years,” says Muhwezi-Hall, adding that Gladney often encourages her to bring it to life. The urgency of the pandemic, as she watched tens of millions of service workers lose their jobs, forced her to reorient her ideas.
Muhwezi-Hall and Gladney began building QuickHire in March 2020. In August, Muhwezi-Hall and her husband moved from LA to Gladney’s basement in Wichita, Kansas, for seven months to continue construction. Muhwezi-Hall and her husband have moved to Chicago, and the sisters work together remotely and on in-person visits.
“At some point, you have to move,” she said. “And if you’re afraid to move, you’ll never grow. So that’s what I apply to everything: You have to go to grow.”
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