OneDegree

Career opportunities are limited by who people know and their geographic location. These limitations are blatantly summed up by the current American economy, which is facing alarming unemployment, student debt, and income inequality. We are facing historic unemployment, yet there are over three million living-wage trade jobs unfilled, which is expected to 10x over the next decade. Part of the misalignment between the workforce and available jobs is the foundational stigma towards trade jobs through the "college for all" mentality. 

We guide individuals in exploring, selecting, and pursuing a trade career through a mobile app. This process includes career assessment and exploration, trade school selection, vetted student loans, and successful career placement.

With millions of annual high school graduates and community college students, we are starting by focusing on expanding the next generation's opportunities to escape generational poverty, then expanding to include those looking to change careers or currently unemployed.

Learners are currently limited to the pathways they have personal exposure to, exploring through family, friends, or classroom career presentations. Furthermore, the pervasive college-for-all mentality continues to bog down exploration of non-degree pathways which can offer fantastic career opportunities and living-wage salaries, while limiting student debt exposure.

Trade jobs continue to go unfilled (3M+) yet immediate college enrollment is at 67% despite over 40% of attendees failing or dropping out. The number of vacant trade jobs will reach 30M by 2030 due to baby boomer retirements and rapid job growth, but only 20% of students currently even consider pursuing a trade job. 

"Income inequality in the U.S. is found to have increased by about 20% from 1980 to 2016" according to Pew Research Center, aligning with a decreased interest in trade jobs. Furthermore, over 29% of Americans now live in lower class households with a median salary of only $26k, and the middle class has shrunk from 62% to 43% over the past decades.

Income inequality has many ties to other forms of inequality, which are perpetuated by generational income poverty. Students with disadvantaged access to education and skills-building find themselves stuck and feeling unable to escape.

We are building a mobile-first platform that helps students explore, select, and pursue non-degree pathways. These careers include any role that requires a certification but not a four-year degree, such as private pilots, software engineers, and real estate agents. It also includes the classic trade careers like electricians, auto mechanics, etc.

Our unique value proposition is in connecting skilled career seekers directly to career professionals for a 1:1 personalized informational interview and then supporting their career pursuit all the way through to successful job placement.

We are starting with user validation through high school CTE curriculum integration but will expand to include middle-aged job seekers, career changers, and the unemployed. 

The solution is completely free to users, thereby eliminating any barriers for adoption, allowing us to immediately bring opportunities to low-socioeconomic communities. 

The platform is being built around Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and will be powered by AI-driven career matching similar to how popular dating sites work. This will allow us to match career-seekers to pathways not only based on core attributes but equally important longevity-drivers like personality fit, company diversity and inclusion, salary equality, and more.

Phase one is focused on 10th-14th grade students who have not decided on a career path, are at risk of dropping out, or are otherwise unsure of their chosen pathway. We are starting with underserved communities, traditionally provided inequitable career opportunities. We are partnered with Tulare County Office of Education (100k+ students), the large majority of whom are from low and middle class income families, often stuck in generational poverty cycles. 

We are currently conducting focus groups and large-scale surveys with TCOE and three other school districts, to ensure our target population is engaged in helping define the solution. Our goal is to rapidly prototype through an iterative build-test-learn cycle to refine our solution in a manner that best serves those in need. Through this hypothesis testing we are building a minimal-viable-product that we aim to start testing via a pilot in early 2021 using a no-code platform called Codebots.

Our solution engages students on the curriculum-level, providing a personal portal and concierge service, by which they are guided through career exploration, selection, and pursuit including job placement.

Phase two will expand our target market to serve middle-age job seekers, career changers, and the unemployed.

We will connect learners directly with non-degree career professionals to enable informed decisions via authentic insight often lost through typical career websites or classroom career day events. This fosters support for learners through 1:1 conversations, enabling users to ask deeper questions and truly assess alignment with their self-efficacy, personality alignment, and other SCCT factors.

In addition, we will work directly with employers to match their non-degree opportunities to our recent graduates by partnering with existing education and workforce programs of the new economy. We also plan to address skill-building for career transitions and the unemployed in later stages of growth. 

• We have two co-founders currently working on the solution 
• A part-time marketing/content director (1)
• Four senior engineering students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (4)
• We also have a CTE director advising us from one of the largest impoverished school districts in the nation (Tulare County)

Our approach is to focus on individual character and their alignment with our vision to rebuild the lower and middle class, shrinking the wage gap by addressing cyclical generational poverty supported in-part through systemic racism. We want to continue building a company that values the individual and celebrates a diverse and equitable culture. Our whole company is based on creating equality and inclusion, so we want that to carry through in every decision we make.

We are modeling much of our company’s approach after Disney's celebration of differences and loving each person for who they are. Through diversity we will have the strongest platform for true positive cultural and economic change, relating directly to the communities and diverse populations we serve.

Our mobile platform specializes in skilled careers (careers that don't require a 4-year degree), supporting students through the entire process from exploration to successful job placement. Our competitors, like Nepris, only focus on broad exploration of all careers, with an emphasis on careers requiring a bachelor's degree. We are further differentiating through curated content, like POV video, to provide students an experience of working a skilled career (e.g. sitting in the cockpit of an airplane as the pilot). We are also growing a community by leveraging prevalent influencers on TikTok/Instagram to promote trade-type career paths, leveraging user-generated content to fill in knowledge gaps. Finally, unlike our competitors, we are enabling students to connect directly with trade professionals for one-on-one informational interviews that enable in-depth and authentic career insights. 

There are many barriers for students in underserved communities, including limited access to career opportunities and support in pursuing them. Our business model is fundamentally different from competitors because we are addressing the entire process of career exploration, selection, and pursuit in one concierge service and is 100% free for school districts and students. Instead, we are partnering with mid to large cap companies who need to fill the gap in their shrinking and aging workforce with new talent. We help grow their candidate pipeline by providing access to our user base of students across multiple school districts versus their existing approach of specific school partnerships. Think of us as the Handshake for skilled career opportunities, connecting companies directly to high schools.

OneDegree both leverages existing technology, and proprietary solutions, to build a user experience that is personalized and engaging. Our vision is to empower all students through technology and human mentorship to help enable the best career choice specifically for them. 

We are building our platform using C#/ React through Codebots, a no-code platform that allows us to maintain ownership of our code and data.

For career exploration, we are utilizing career database APIs (incl. BLS.gov) upon which we are  adding curated content. Part of the content is original in-house production and part is via trade professionals who integrate content from their social media accounts like TikTok and Instagram. Furthermore, we are designing a proprietary career exploration assessment and accompanying algorithm to help point students to career paths that match with their personality and interests. 

For career selection, we are building a library of FAQs through which AI chatbots help answer common questions and reduce our need for human capital. This will enable us to scale our solution quickly and help more students. We will layer this automated approach with real-life career counselors who can connect with a student over video chat (3rd party integrated API). 

For securing a career, hiring companies will have their own profiles and be able to connect with student profiles to discuss future employment. 

OneDegree is intentionally utilizing a multitude of existing technologies and bundling them together to improve the process of career exploration and selection. This strategic decision is enabling us to go-to-market much quicker than building all tech in-house and will scale rapidly. 

Databases have existed for decades and are used in virtually every website that displays in-depth content. Connecting career path pages to social media influencers is as easy as embedding videos from social media accounts, which is built into web development platforms like Squarespace and Wix. There are a multitude of existing professional career exploration assessments developed, like Myers Briggs, Keirsey Temperament Sorter, and John Holland's SDS Test that we will utilize as a foundation for our assessment.  OneDegree will use off-the-shelf video production tools to create curated original content. AI chatbots are commonly used and are available as services like ZenDesk. Video chat integration can be done with Zoom, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, etc. Creating profiles for both users and companies is functionality also built into pre-built website templates offered by Squarespace and Wix.

We are currently product testing with multiple school districts to conduct hypothesis testing and support a strong build-test-learn feedback loop to ensure our product is both valid and viable.

Our solution directly supports the next generation of American workers. By integrating directly into Career Technical Education (CTE) curriculum, with no charge to students/schools, our platform offers career support when existing high school counselors are overwhelmed, 700 students-to-one counselors in some cases. Through improved student support, we aim to grow the "supply" of students pursuing skilled careers, which will help backfill the rapidly retiring baby boomer generation (30M vacancies by 2030). Interviewing over 25 companies in need of tradespeople, we learned of the personal challenge this has on business owners and managers.

Exposing high-paying career opportunities that don’t require a college degree will help ensure deep and meaningful long-term change in breaking generational poverty cycles. Immediate impact is aligned to occur with students in Tulare County (100k+ students), one of the nation’s poorest school districts, directly addressing our aim to help low-socioeconomic communities. 

Due to COVID, our student user surveys were cut short in February, but we have data from 30+ students expressing strong interest in (80%+ "very likely to use") our platform. They stated lack of available help from existing school counselors and the process in bridging from high school into a viable career. Furthermore, we have three other school districts lined up for focus groups, planning to run pilot tests in early 2021. Los Angeles Unified School District has also expressed interest in seeing the focus group results (2nd largest school district nationally) and partnering.

We are utilizing Social Cognitive Career Theory to better understand career decision making factors, like family/school influence, to effectively help place people into roles that benefit themselves and their larger community economics (e.g. median salaries, home purchases, etc.), to help ensure long-term positive impacts. 

Lastly, we plan on incorporating as a B-corp to ensure our community benefit is kept center and prioritized above profit. The co-founders have brainstormed dozens of ideas in the last decade and chose to pursue OneDegree because of the massive potential social benefit it holds.

Within the next year, we will go live with our beta product, having piloted it with at least 150,000 students across multiple school districts. We will acquire 5-10 paying customers (mid/large cap companies) with dual SaaS & recruitment fee agreements, and begin expanding to school districts in AZ and TX (currently in talks with TX school district).  We will finish our incubator program with USC Viterbi Startup Garage and apply to a highly regarded accelerator program, like Techstars, to take on $120k in pre-seed funding for a stake in our company. This will enable us to grow our team to help serve more young people and grow our sustainable business model through recurring revenue streams from companies in need of tradespeople.

Within five years we aim to integrate into the CTE curriculum at the national level. We will achieve this through large-school-district piloting/adoption to build momentum. We will also work closely with legislators to help continue to improve CTE curriculum and write grants for continued progress and innovation support. We aim to be a pivotal and substantial force for the good of America's students and next generation of skilled professionals. We aim to have 1M+ annual users with over 10% of users placed into living-wage skilled careers. With this large growth, we can enact even greater changes for good within our education and community systems throughout the U.S. including expansion to career-changers, the unemployed, and international users.

One-Year Barriers

1. Funding to enable team growth, user growth, and customer acquisition

   1. Co-founders are working part time to cover cost of living (family, student loans, etc)

   2. Lack of team manpower to focus on marketing, product development, business development, and expansion to other regions outside CA

   3. Lack of financial resources to acquire software tools to scale user, channel partner, and customer growth

   4. Lack of financial resources for legal formation of corporation

2. Acquiring student feedback data to support product feature buildout

3. Knowledge and resources to code our beta product

4. Proof of value on industry-side for skilled career recruitment business model

5. Proof of value for trade schools for direct-marketing business model

6. Partnering with more school districts to run pilots

7. Gaining paying customers from industry

8. Gaining paying customers from trade schools

Five-Year Barriers

1. Lack of team manpower to expand nationwide

2. Industry partner growth to cover all skilled career opportunities 

3. Access/influence with legislators to:

   1. Create national support for skilled career placement growth

   2. Promote cultural acceptance of skilled careers as viable career path within the American home

4. Grant writing expertise

One-Year Solutions to Barriers

1. Apply to and get accepted into a highly regarded accelerator program by 7/1/21 or gain other funding through alternative source (pitch competitions, angel investors, pre-seed VC)

2. Finish focus groups (Nov 2020) and use that momentum to conduct are larger electronic student survey to ensure value-add product build

3. Hire full-stack programmer to finish our product beta build

4. Gain 10 LOI's from mid/large cap companies hiring for trade careers

5. Gain 10 LOI's from trade schools with CAC > $1000

6. Sign up school districts currently onboard for focus groups/surveying

7. Leverage personal networks within entertainment, healthcare, and construction industries as well as the USC business school network

8. Leverage Zoom.info to cold-call trade school VP's of Marketing and set up informational interviews

 Five-Year Solutions to Barriers

1. Leverage YoY revenue growth to expand OneDegree team

2. Leverage relationships with trade schools & community colleges to tap their industry partners across all industries

3. Partner with large trade unions as a customer segment and leverage relationship for access to state representatives

4. Hire grant writer

• Users (total number of users, monthly recurring users, number of unique users, time on app, 1:1 connections, career placement longevity/turnover)

• Customers (number of industry customers, number of students placed in careers, number of SaaS subscriptions, ARR, CAC, LTV)

• Trade School/Community College Partners (number of partners, % increased enrollment, application to enrollment conversion rate, school CAC reduction, student graduation rates)

• User success (avg/median salary, length within the position, industry feedback on individual's success, career growth, etc.)

• Community impact (graduation rates, average annual household income, unemployment rate, home purchases, home value)

The founders, Gabe and Tim, met in undergrad 8 years ago at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. We’ve been friends since and have worked on a few ideas over the years but continued to shelve them in search of creating a large societal impact. We’ve been working on OneDegree since January 2020.

Other than the typical fire in the belly and positive entrepreneurial spirit, we have a combined 16 years of industry experience across the energy, construction, entertainment, and healthcare sectors. We’ve continued our education since undergrad with a passion and love learning. Tim is a former-founder with experience coaching several early-stage startups and Gabe has both sold and managed $15M+ retrofit construction projects with huge cross-functional teams.

Gabe grew up as a first-generation American, the son of Jewish immigrants who built a small business up for decades in L.A. only to have it lost during The Great Recession. He pursued a "safe" career in engineering but pivoted to pursue an MBA at the University of Southern California. In the MBA program, he quickly realized the power of informational interviews and in the construction industry, he recognized the opportunities within non-degree careers, both of which he hopes to share through OneDegree.

Tim is the oldest in a low-income missionary family and has experienced working with impoverished individuals and families in downtown L.A., including helping rehabilitate homeless adolescents through career exploration. He always knew he wanted to make a big impact on the world by helping others through social entrepreneurship.

We are currently partnered with Tulare County Office of Education (TCOE) in Central California (one of the top ten low-income school districts nationally) along with several other Central California districts (Atascadero, Templeton, and Paso Robles).

Additionally, we are working with the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Industrial Engineering department to lead a team of four (4) senior project students through product research and design testing for the 2020/2021 school year.

We are working with the Program Director of the MS in Marketing program at USC to develop a qualitative and quantitative study to collect user feedback for product development iteration. We are also working with the USC Blackstone Launchpad within the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Marshall School of Business and it’s mentorship network to hone in our business model and testing to create a sustainable business. 

We also were just recently accepted into the USC Viterbi Startup Garage, an early stage incubator known for its highly rigorous application process and low acceptance rate (5.8%). Last year, several of its program graduates raised funding in the $100M's from the Venture Capital community.

We are working with the Freeman Center for Career and Completion at Pasadena City College to further understand career placement challenges, grow their pipeline of students and create relationships with their existing industry partners.  

Regarding industry partners, we have an LOI with Hoag Hospital Orange County (5000+ employees) and are in talks with potential partners at Boeing, Tesla, GM, and Texas Children’s Hospital.

No single source exists for students to manage the entire process of trade career discovery and pursuit. The U.S. is pouring millions of dollars into Career Technical Education (CTE) programs to help change the narrative of lacking trade workers but students need and want a solution that makes it easy to discover non-degree career paths. Using AI we will answer student questions quickly and in real-time. If needed they can talk to an online counselor and ultimately directly with a trade worker in the field of interest through our platform (quality/safety controlled). By reducing trade school CAC 50% we can offer students a $1k scholarship increasing platform stickiness/LTV. Our revenue streams are twofold - lead generation for trade schools/community colleges for a monthly retainer fee and talent placement for mid-large size companies in need of tradespeople for a monthly retainer fee and placement fee.

Our goal is to completely change the narrative for future generations, growing middle-class America and removing the stigma associated with not getting a college degree. Right now there is a huge "supply" problem for skilled careers because Baby Boomers are retiring rapidly and not many students consider skilled labor careers. Ironically, these are the very careers that will not easily be replaced with AI, will continue to provide a strong backbone for America's future growth, and ultimately can greatly minimize student debt.

OneDegree's "lifecycle management app" and direct-to-professional connectivity help students successfully explore, pursue, and obtain skilled career certification with confidence.

The path to financial sustainability for OneDegree is through different strategies based on our stage of development. In the short term, we are seeking market validation through a pilot program with school districts and Letters Of Intent (LOIs) from mid to large-cap companies needing to expand their tradesperson recruitment pipeline as well as LOIs from trade school/community colleges in need of expanding their enrollment pipeline.

During market validation (Q1 2021), we aim to gain initial funding through an accelerator program or grant that will enable further product development in preparation for go-live and to start facilitating recruitment for our clients (hiring companies looking for skilled career professionals). 

OneDegree will create financial sustainability by charging companies a retainer fee for access to the hiring pool of high school students on the platform and a recruitment fee for every role successfully filled.

After users connect with industry to understand a skilled career path in further depth, exploring trade schools/community college trade certification programs is the final step in their pursuit of a non-degree career. OneDegree creates a recruitment pipeline for trade schools and can charge an affiliate marketing fee for advertisement on the platform. 

Concurrently, we will continue to grow our user base through channel partnerships with school districts.

While the intent is to bootstrap OneDegree, seeking a seed investment round is a possibility depending on resource gaps to scale.

We were accepted into the international Blackstone Techstars Summer Fellowship (2020) which provided a grant of $5000.00 (no equity given).

No other funding has been acquired at this time and we are debt-free. No revenue expected until Q3 2021.

We are seeking $111k funding through a grant, pitch competition, angel funding and/or pre-seed venture capital.

We are applying to MIT Solve REIMAGINING PATHWAYS TO EMPLOYMENT IN THE US CHALLENGE and plan to also submit applications to highly regarded accelerators like Techstars, 500 Startups, or Mucker Labs.

https://docs.google.com/spread...

We are seeking mentorship and financial support in several key areas to help boost progress as we work to improve non-college degree pathway exploration and selection for American low-socioeconomic high school students:

1. We need help validating our product-market fit and business model. We need help exploring customer discovery through connections to mid to large-cap companies in need of tradespeople. We also need connections with leadership in trade schools. 

2. We need help with product development. Our strategy is to bring on internal expertise in full stack coding. We are seeking funding to overcome this barrier, enabling a live pilot in early 2021.

3. We need to determine our legal structure. We need support in assessing, selecting, and completing legal structure and formation to create a strong foundation for the next 12 months and beyond.

4. We need funding to procure software tools to scale user growth and customer acquisition. 

Lastly, we "do not know what we do not know", so we are seeking guidance and insight from  Morgridge Family Foundation, New Profit, and the Challenge partners . We are very open to coaching, mentorship, and even consideration of future board member candidates.

• Morgridge Family Foundation - we seek to gain meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with partners in symbiotic industries (e.g. mindSpark Learning). We are additionally seeking  funding support to continue pushing for a better tomorrow. Our founders just completed our first Triathlon and need insights from John and Carrie to plan our first Ironman training schedule.

• New Profit - we want to partner closely with New Profit to gain support for a people-centered solution that encourages inclusion through solving the specific problem of a shrinking middle class and overcome barriers such as economic, cultural, and social barriers for non-college degree pathways that currently exist in our society

• Connecting with the largest high school districts in the interior U.S. states for integration into their Career Technical Education (CTE) curriculum (City of Chicago IL, Clark County NV, Houston ISD TX, Fairfax County VA, Gwinnett County GA)

• Top trade schools with focus on our strategic 2021 growth strategy of moving into interior states (CollegeAmerica AZ, Southern Careers Institute Corpus Christi TX, etc.)

• Labor Unions for apprenticeship connections and integration into our platform pathways (Service Employees International Union, Teamsters, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, International Union of Operating Engineers)

• Apprenticeship programs (e,g, FAME) to integrate into our pathway model and bring students top-ranked options for post-high school skilled career pathways

• Introductions to mid/large cap companies that do not require a college degree and offer internal workforce development programs (e.g. Amazon, Google, etc.)