Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Andrew Tan, the Founder & CEO at Ladder:
Q: What is Ladder?
A: Ladder is the professional community platform for the next generation to grow their careers together. Ladder was founded in 2020, during the height of COVID-19, when millions of college students across the country were sent home with no job lined up, no idea what remote work meant, and no sense of community. Ladder CEO Andrew Tan, then at Stanford studying computer science, was one of these students. Shocked at how the pandemic disproportionately affected young professionals, he immediately went to work to help classmates and peers get back on their feet. Ladder started as a mentorship program that connected 500+ students with industry mentors, then launched the Remote Students Newsletter to share remote opportunities and career resources to 75,000+ subscribers, and is now a popular app with tens of thousands of users and dozens of customers and partners.
Q: Any highlights on your recent announcement?
A: Ladder, the next-gen professional community platform, announced the launch of its new mobile app and raise of $3.7 million in funding led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, Pear VC, Scribble Ventures, and Script Capital. Notable angel investors include Tony Xu (CEO of DoorDash), Josh Buckley (CEO of Product Hunt), Harry Stebbings (20VC), Matthew Dellavedova (NBA Player), Josh Elman, and executives from a16z, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Uber, and Robinhood. The app is launched in over 1000 colleges across the country and internationally, with thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of members, and hundreds of thousands of conversations, posts, and threads already happening on the platform.
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Q: Can you give us more insights into your offering?
A: On Ladder, members can join interest-based communities, consume high-quality career content, engage in fun discussions, land their dream job, and form meaningful relationships with peers and mentors. Additionally, communities can host their job board on Ladder, community builders can launch their own professional communities, and companies can recruit early career talent.
Ladder features three core pillars:
Communities: Members can join communities with thousands of peers based on industries, roles, and interests that matter to them.
Content: Ladder communities are filled with high-quality, social career content that range from opportunities and resources to debates and AMAs.
Connections: The antithesis of LinkedIn, on Ladder, connections start in the communities and flourish through Events, AMAs, Group Chats, and Coffee Chats, a tool that handpicks the best people on Ladder to meet.
With the funding, Ladder will continue to grow their team and build innovative solutions for professionals and communities to get more out of their careers. If you are interested in partnering as a community, company, recruiter, or in any other capacity, please email team@ladder.to.
Q: What can we expect from your company in the next 6 months? What are your plans?
A: Our plans these next 6 months focus on:
Growing the team. We’re actively hiring for world-class engineers, designers, and growth people.
Build category-defining products for professionals and communities to get more out of their careers. We’re working on tools for communities to host their job board on Ladder, community builders to launch their own professional communities, and companies to recruit early career talent.
Raise our next round to fuel hyper-growth.
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Q: What is the best thing about your company that people might not know about?
A: Almost everyone on our team started as users of the product before they were hired. Community is not only core to our product but also core to our team and the type of culture we are building here at Ladder. We’re a team of hackers, founders, builders, operators, and overall fun human beings who care deeply about democratizing access to career growth. If this resonates with you, come join our rocketship!
