In this week’s #SixtySecondStartup, we spoke to Will Ross who is the Founder of Tendo, a skills passport for frontline workers. Will started Tendo to make frontline work more secure for employees and to make it easier for companies to hire, retain and train their workforce.
Our interview with Will:
What does your company do?
Tendo allows frontline workers to generate workplace credentials while they do their jobs, building a verified, portable history of skills and hours at the end of each week.
Why did you set up this company?
We started Tendo to make frontline work more certain. For the worker, this means improving their long-term economic security. For the business, certainty comes through having a loyal, dependable workforce and an ability to encourage employees to learn new skills.
What is your business model?
We bill businesses on a per user basis. This monthly charge is a way to offset the cost of workforce churn.
We think that there’s growth in this sector because:
Frontline workers remain offline. By bringing them online, visibility of supply provides a major step forwards. We also consider this workforce to contain a massive amount of untapped operational and creative potential – we aim to empower.
How did you get your first customer?
By building a feature that removed an administrative overhead for a training provider.
We knew we were onto something when:
When employees indicated that they would be motivated by having a trusted way to generate and retain a record of their work reputation.
Our most effective marketing channel has been:
Going to events where we can speak directly with decision makers.
The biggest mistake that I’ve made is:
Spending time marketing to cities where Tendo can’t have a repeatable physical presence.
What we look for when recruiting:
A willingness to experiment and an inclination to speak more in terms of immediate actions than long-term plans.
We worked with AIN because:
Angel Investment Network provide a clear way to signal company type to a list of investors, ensuring that angels can search for early stage companies where they can significantly influence growth.
Get started today and view pitches from a huge range of entrepreneurs around the world.
