VaiLocal

VaiLocal is a hyper-local jobs board for teens & young adults and the technological replacement for word-of-mouth and now hiring signs.

VaiLocal addresses problems that exist in a two-sided market between local businesses and young job seekers aged 15 - 23.

Young job seekers face a common problem when applying to jobs or internships. They can spend their time sending out cold emails or scouring global jobs boards for opportunities, but they know that the probability they secure a position in this way is slim, especially if they lack word-of-mouth connections. Family and friends – not global jobs boards – are reliable platforms for high school students, college students, and young adults to secure jobs and internships in their local communities. This situation is problematic for young people who lack connections, which is often the case for first-generation, underrepresented, and/or low-income individuals. As a first-generation Sicilian American and the son of immigrants, I (Giuseppe Di Cera) experienced these lack of connections and was motivated to create VaiLocal as a high school junior in 2019. Given that there are 47.12 million people between the ages of 14-24 in the US, we estimate that over 30 million people may face this problem, too (Statista). The consequence of this problem is that children from well-connected families may secure career-defining jobs and internships, while children from first-generation, underrepresented, and/or low-income families may not. 

Local businesses are similarly discouraged because their biggest problem right now is finding and hiring talent. From our customer discovery research talking to local businesses over the last 4 years, we found that many use global jobs boards sparingly when hiring because they are inefficient and lack a local connection. Instead, local businesses rely heavily on word-of-mouth, walk-ins, and now hiring signs. But by using their connections in hiring, local businesses introduce strong biases and overlook talent. This problem is important because on the local level, small businesses create 1.5 million jobs per year and account for 64% of all new jobs created nationally (Fundera 2020). In 2022, 33.2 million small businesses accounted for 46.4% of jobs (PolicyAdvice 2022). However, per a CNBC Small Business Survey, 52% of small business owners said it got more difficult to find qualified people to hire compared to one year ago (CNBC 2022). Local businesses may prefer to hire local candidates (it uncomplicates the hiring process and vetting candidates is easier), but it seems that their current tactics are not working well. As a result, local business owners face the consequences of wasting their time and money just to secure unqualified workers. Overall, we estimate that millions of local businesses in the US face this problem. 

These issues are relevant right now because the present and future of talent acquisition is local. A July 2022 study from researchers at the US Census Bureau and Harvard University showed that 60% of young adults (age 26) live within 10 miles of where they grew up, while 80% live within 100 miles of where they grew up (United States Census Bureau 2022). Thus, the jobs that individuals secure locally can be career-defining. 

VaiLocal is a hyper-local jobs board for teens & young adults and the technological replacement for word-of-mouth and now hiring signs. Since 2019, we've advertised positions for over 35 local organizations and have helped make over 100 placements into jobs, internships, volunteering positions, and tutoring opportunities. We are currently only active in St. Louis but are expanding our operations to Miami this year. 

Getting a job shouldn’t be a contest of who knows who - and we are the hyper-local solution to that problem. We bring quality to both sides of the market (businesses and job seekers) because we solve a critical problem for businesses by helping them find talent. We don't sell promotion to businesses, we sell them a motivated employee that's ready to work on day 1. 

Our product works in the following way. We solicit jobs from local organizations via email. We post these jobs on our website, www.vailocal.com. Then, we immediately send new opportunities to our 120+ subscribers before we make them public on Instagram at @vailocal.io. Jobs are removed from our site when they are filled. 

Right now, we are developing a new application software using HTML and Ruby to sell to local businesses that eases the stress of hiring for them. These businesses can fill out a form that indicates their preferences for a particular job, such as preferred experience or age limits. Applicants will fill out the same information, and our software will calculate a % fit that the applicant has for that particular job (i.e. Giuseppe has a 75% fit for the position). This software will make it easier for businesses to narrow down 15 applicants to the 2-3 that they should seriously consider. 

Local businesses are our first target market and include any entity that is interested in advertising local jobs. These businesses are unique because of their local presence and diversity of scope and size (local does not mean small). From our first-person market research with dozens of local organizations in St. Louis, their biggest need right now is employees, who have been harder to attract since COVID. In contrast to global jobs boards like Indeed and Linkedin (which are inefficient and lack a local connection), VaiLocal targets a concentrated network of young job seekers for local businesses. VaiLocal also replaces word-of-mouth and now hiring signs with technology, which removes some of the strong biases (socioeconomic, racial, gender, etc.) that local businesses use when they hire only within their personal networks. Ultimately, VaiLocal connects local businesses to the local talent they crave.

Young local job seekers are our second target market. We define these job seekers as individuals seeking local jobs, internships, volunteering positions, or tutoring opportunities. This market’s demographic is unemployed males and females, aged between 15 - 23. This market is unique for two reasons: 1) companies often stress the desire to hire local talent early, yet 2) first-person and online research shows that young people have difficulties finding jobs and internships. We provide value to this market by offering a centralized database for highly attainable, substantive local jobs. There is no go-to jobs board for young people - we will fill that void. Many young people are also unaware of opportunities because they are not well-connected - we will fill that void by being the technological replacement for word-of-mouth and listing all local positions on our site.

Our team consists of Giuseppe Di Cera, Paul Cavalieri, Bridget Moench, Elena Lázaro, Sam Loiterstein, Celeste Serpa, and Danny Mendoza.

As a first-generation Sicilian American and the son of immigrants, I (Giuseppe Di Cera) did not grow up with a network of family connections that could help me get a job. When I saw how others faced the same problem, I was motivated to create VaiLocal (formerly the Student Opportunities Network) in 2019 as a junior in high school. Now, I'm a junior at the University of Chicago majoring in Economics and minoring in Molecular Engineering. My determination to solve the problems addressed above for local businesses and young people has earned VaiLocal and myself many honors just last year. St. Louis Inno named me as one of the top entrepreneurs under the age of 25 in the city. The Taco Bell Foundation gave us a $500 grant. The United States Senate Youth Alumni Association asked us to create and manage their private jobs board for alumni. And finally, we were in discussions with the City of Palermo to expand our services internationally to fight a youth unemployment rate of 48.3% in Sicily. While I have experience working at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, Royal Caribbean Group, and the US Senate, just last year I sent out close to 80 summer internship applications and only heard back from 5 companies. It should not be this hard to find a job or internship, but it is. 

Paul Cavalieri is our advisor. Paul serves as the Associate Director for small business operations at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Paul's experience as a former small business owner of a bike shop gives us a perspective of the very local business owners whose problems we solve. 

Bridget Moench, Elena Lázaro, Danny Mendoza, Celeste Serpa, and Sam Loiterstein serve respectively as our Social Media Manager, Public Relations Manager, Miami Expansion Interns, and St. Louis Expansion Intern, respectively. The first three are college students at TCU, Duquesne University, and the University of Chicago, respectively. The last two are high school students in Miami and St. Louis. Their experiences struggling to secure jobs and internships represent the target market of young people we serve. 

Since 2019, we've advertised positions for over 35 local organizations and have helped make over 100 placements into jobs, internships, volunteering positions, and tutoring opportunities. 

Customer discovery is our most important form of research. Since 2019 we have talked to dozens of local businesses and students who face hiring problems. By talking directly to businesses, our customer discovery research has showed us that our competitor at the local level is not Linkedin or Indeed - it is word-of-mouth. By talking directly to young people, our customer discovery research has showed us that resources like Indeed and Handshake are generally unhelpful for finding jobs, while word-of-mouth and connections are very helpful. This customer discovery research has been performed in St. Louis, Miami, and Chicago. We have collected similar information from local businesses and young people via surveys. 

We have also engaged directly with users via our website and social media. Since we became operational in 2020, we've had 5,143 visits & 2,867 unique visitors to the website. We've also attracted 900+ followers on Instagram and have 3,800+ accounts reached in just the last 90 days. 

VaiLocal is a unique way to approach the local hiring problem that exists between young people and local organizations. 

Teens and young adults do not have a reliable jobs board where they can secure positions. The current options (Linkedin, Indeed, and Handshake) have a depth of opportunities, but they are inefficient because they are not local and the probability of securing a position on these sites is low. In other words, many teens and young adults don't find them helpful. VaiLocal is reliable because we promote curated opportunities that have a high probability of attainment. We are also the solution for the millions of young people (like Giuseppe) who don't have the family connections to get a substantive opportunity. Our service is the great equalizer at the local level because it is free for all to view. Don't just take it from me - view a few of our user testimonials here. 

Local organizations' biggest problem right now is hiring. We solve that problem by connecting them with the most talented young people our community has to offer, which is not a feat that any other organization has accomplished. Moreover, local organizations don't find global jobs boards helpful, either. That is why many rely on word-of-mouth and walk-ins for hiring. This creates biases in hiring that leads to talent being overlooked. However, we replace this word-of-mouth hiring with technology because we list opportunities that would have likely been unknown to young people. We don't sell businesses promotion - we sell them motivated employees who are ready to work on day one. Indeed, the local organizations that we've worked with have been amazed by the talent our service has provided - view a few of our company testimonials here. 

We expect our impact to be catalytic because VaiLocal has already changed behaviors at the local level. Many of the local organizations we've worked with don't rely on word-of-mouth to hire - they rely on us. Young people in our community don't have to send out cold emails or scour global jobs boards for opportunities - they can rely on us. We have created a business and market among overlooked local organizations and young people. Others may try to imitate us, but it is very difficult to replicate the hyper-local nature of our service.

In 2023, we will make 100 placements (into jobs, internships, volunteering positions, and tutoring opportunities), secure 150 paying subscribers, obtain 50 paying businesses, and create 20 internship programs at local organizations from scratch. This will be achieved as we expand our services in St. Louis and open a new market in Miami. 

We will make 100 placements – at least 70 of those placements will come from St. Louis and 30 will come from Miami. To make 100 placements across St. Louis and Miami, we will list more jobs, internships, volunteering positions, and tutoring opportunities. Thus, we will solicit as many opportunities as possible from local organizations. We will accomplish this goal through mass outreach to local organizations via email and social media platforms, the purchase of digital and print ads in local newspapers and magazines, and partnerships with local chambers of commerce. 

We will secure 150 paying subscribers onto our platform – at least 100 subscribers will come from St. Louis and 50 will come from Miami. It will always be free to view opportunities on our site, but subscribers are individuals who can pay for premium features of our service, such as resume & cover letter reviews and early access to new opportunities. We will accomplish this goal via heavy promotion in local high schools and colleges, social media campaigns that utilize our testimonials, and promotion in parent groups across St. Louis and Miami. If students don't have the disposable income to pay $20/month to receive premium features that will help them start/continue their careers with a great local job, their parents certainly will.

We will secure 50 paying businesses onto our site - at least 35 will come from St. Louis and 15 will come from Miami. It will always be free for a business to post an opportunity on our site. Paying businesses are businesses that pay $220/post for promotion on social media, higher placement on our jobs board, and automatic alerts to subscribers. Paying businesses are also businesses that will pay for our hiring software, which we have not priced yet. This cutting edge software is currently under development and will take the stress of hiring off of local businesses by reducing the time it takes to find and hire an applicant, i.e. we will take 10 applicants and reduce them to the best 2-3 candidates to interview via our software. We will accomplish this goal through mass outreach to local organizations via email and social media platforms, the purchase of digital and print ads in local newspapers and magazines, and partnerships with local chambers of commerce. 

We will create 20 internship programs at local organizations in St. Louis and Miami from scratch. We have experience creating such internship programs. For example, we approached the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law Harris Institute of World Law with an opportunity to create a program for high school students that would allow them to create and implement international relations curriculum in their high schools. We successfully placed 18 students into this program. We also created a program with the Ladue News, one of the largest magazines in St. Louis, to have students write in their magazine - we placed 11 students into this program. We seek to replicate the success we had with these programs in other organizations. We will do so by reaching out to professors at local colleges, local newspapers, and local magazines over the next few months to create those programs this year. 

2 main technologies drive our business - the first has been used over the last four years and the other is currently under development. 

The first main technology is our website - www.vailocal.com - and our Instagram page (@vailocal.io). Our website is powered by Wix and is the home base for our jobs board. Our website is our most important intellectual property because it's where we direct all of our users. When new opportunities are found, we update the website on the backend, modify the graphics for desktop and mobile versions, and publish the product. Our Instagram page is another useful asset for us because it allows us to communicate new positions with interested job seekers and the community. This social network has allowed our business to expand rapidly.

Our second technology is a hiring software system that is currently under development. I (Giuseppe) am currently coding the system using HTML and Ruby. This cutting edge software will take the stress of hiring off of local businesses by reducing the time it takes to find and hire an applicant. How it works is that businesses will fill out information with their requested qualifications and skills for their job candidate. They will be able to customize the form to include relevant skills to their jobs. The applicant will fill out another form with their qualifications and skills. Based on the responses, our program will determine the % fit that each candidate has with a job. For example, Giuseppe may have 20% fit with the job and Bridget may have 70% fit with the job, based on their responses. As a result, the company can determine to only interview Bridget. On the larger scale, our software will allow companies to narrow down a list of candidates to the select few that they believe fit the job best. Thus, our software is unique because it saves local businesses time, helps them find the best talent for the job, and facilitates a more meritocratic process whereby candidates are selected based on their abilities rather than their connections. We will price this software differently than the $220/post. Indeed, this software will be an additional package that local businesses must pay for. 

Current: 613

This is the number of unique visitors to our website in the last year. We've had 1,018 website visits in the last year. Since 2019, we've had 5,143 visits to our website and 2,867 unique visitors. We are currently advertising jobs for 7 businesses, 6 of which are based in St. Louis and 1 of which is based in Miami. 

In next year: 5,000

Financial and legal barriers are the largest hurdles for us.

We are a very costless business. Our largest expense will be on advertising, but we don't have many resources to pay for that. We won a $500 grant from the Taco Bell Foundation Ambition Accelerator last year, but since that's only enough to cover a few ad postings, we will need additional funds to aid in our expansion. 

Legal barriers are also a huge hurdle. I (Giuseppe), nor my peers, have the connections to get legal services for free. We were rejected from the University of Chicago Law School Innovation Clinic and are attempting to find pro bono legal help. Our requests are very important and involve the creation of a privacy policy, terms & conditions, contracts for employers, and statements that release us from any liability should something bad happen during a job, internship, volunteering, or tutoring opportunity. We have operated as a free service over the last 4 years. Now that we are interested in starting to generate revenue, we need legal help with incorporation, the creation of a company bank account, and tax advice.

• University of Chicago Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Our advisor, Paul Cavalieri, is the Associate Director for small business operations at the Polsky Center. We are currently a participant in the University of Chicago College New Venture Challenge. Thus, we have access to mentors and coaches from the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, such as the Deputy Dean for MBA Programs, Starr Marcello.

• City of Ladue. We collaborate with the Mayor of the City of Ladue in St. Louis, Nancy Spewak. In the past, we have solicited some company opportunities through the city and have promoted using their newsletter.

We provide value to both sides of the marketplace (local businesses and young job seekers).

We solve local businesses' biggest problem: hiring talent. They use global jobs boards sparingly because they are inefficient and lack a local connection. Their reliance on word-of-mouth and walk-ins also introduces strong biases into hiring and overlooks talent. We solve that problem because we are hyper-local and the technological replacement for word-of-mouth and now hiring signs. We do this by providing targeted advertising to a concentrated network of young, interested job seekers via our website and social media. We don't sell local businesses promotion - we sell them a motivated young employee who's ready to work on day 1. Thus, these employees help contribute to the revenues of the businesses they work in. More importantly, local business owners have the ability to train the next generation of business and community leaders. For example, one user of our service who interned at a real estate firm one summer found his passion for real estate and enjoyed his experience so much that he returned the next summer. In terms of our revenue, we have operated as a free service to date, but we are now starting to generate revenue. It will be free to post a job on our website, but to gain access to promotion on social media and other features, companies must pay $220/post. Additionally, we know that local business owners do not have much time on their hands. They cannot interview 20 applicants for a job. That's why we are creating a software program that eases the stress for business owners in the hiring process by showing them which candidates are the best "fit" for their job. Once in place, this software will be an extended paid feature of our service (price TBD).

We also solve young people's biggest problem: finding jobs. Many young people lack a network of family connections that can help them obtain jobs. This problem is especially prevalent among first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented people. As a first-generation Sicilian American and the son of immigrants, I (Giuseppe) didn't grow up with that network of connections. This service is meant to benefit anyone, especially those who lack connections that can help them build their careers. We provide a centralized database of highly attainable, substantive local jobs to make the application process easier for young people. We give teens and young adults the opportunity to start/continue their careers and find local mentors through the jobs that we advertise on our website at www.vailocal.com. While viewing the website is free, the paid "subscribers" features of our service include early access to opportunities and on-demand resume and cover letter reviews. These premium features may help young job seekers feel more prepared and polished in the application process. This subscription service will be priced at $20/month, and while teens and young adults may not have the disposable income for this, their parents will certainly pay the fee if it means that their kids can have a better chance at their first/next great job. 

Selling services

• Businesses
  • We will operate on a freemium model. It will be free to post a job on our website. Under this situation, we will not promote the job - it will simply live on the website. 
  • If a business pays $220/post, they will receive promotion on social media, higher placement on our jobs board, and automatic alerts to subscribers. 
  • Once our hiring software is finalized, businesses will pay a fee per post to use it. The pricing for our software is TBD.
• Young job seekers
  • We will operate on a freemium model. It will be free to view opportunities on our website.
  • If a user elects to become a subscriber to our site, they will pay $20/month for premium features that include early access to opportunities and on-demand resume and cover letter reviews. While teens and young adults may not have the disposable income for this, their parents will certainly pay the fee if it means that their kids can have a better chance at their first/next great job. 

Contributions from community members who value our service

• Another way that we'll make money is by contributions from people in the community who value our service. People can choose to contribute as low as $1 to as much as $1000 to our company.