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Good morning everyone!

I write this issue feeling simultaneously frustrated by what’s going on in the world and catalyzed by the people I see who refuse to accept it. In these moments, I’m reminded that hope is not a resource to hoard, but rather the spark of a match that can ignite many others.

What's in this issue:

• Some of the ways I messed up building products

• Upcoming events ft. NY Tech Week!

• Opportunities

Disclaimer: You might be wondering, what am I doing telling founders how to build products? After all, I’ve never founded a tech startup. I’m a product manager at a big tech company replete with bureaucracy. But I have created a tech solution for low income populations before, and it kept nagging me how the same kinds of challenges I faced would arise in conversations with founders in this space. After searching the web, I was disappointed by the lack of content about working with low income communities, especially at a time where it feels like building for these audiences is increasingly important. So I figured, let me try writing that article. Consider this a reflection on lessons I learned from my past experiences, based on the product skills I know now. 

Mistakes I made building for low-income populations

I used to volunteer as a patient advocate for Health Leads, where I’d serve low-income hospital patients each week with accessing resources like food, clothing, and employment. Over time, I noticed how it was comparatively easier—I say comparatively knowing none of this is truly easy—to receive food benefits or healthcare over getting a job. Yes, there were many requirements to qualify for programs like SNAP or Medicaid, but if you met those requirements you could be fairly confident in receiving those resources. On the other hand, it’s not news that you can qualify for a job and still not get hired. But for our clients, it wasn’t just about skills—it was also whether they could get to the job reliably, balance their work hours with caretaking, or even if they had professional clothing on hand.

It was demoralizing. People came into our clinic thinking we could offer them the secret sauce for immediately landing a job. Instead, we’d spend hours scouring jobs on websites like Indeed and Snagajob. By the time we found anything that felt remotely worth applying for, both of us were thinking: Why was it so hard to find a job that barely paid above minimum wage?

That frustration motivated me to build Jobscraper, a tool which automated the job search process to curate and send documents of relevant job listings to clients. I thought my solution would be a hit—it reduced the job search from hours to mere minutes, it factored in the user’s address when recommending jobs, and even suggested adjacent jobs that the client could be qualified for based on their experience. Even if it wasn’t perfect, it was a step in the right direction, right?

• MISTAKE 1: Building for the customer, instead of with them

I thought I knew what my clients wanted—after all, I had helped them get jobs for almost half a year, and I saw firsthand the issues they were facing in the job search process. What could go wrong with just digitizing the workflow we were already using to find jobs?

It turns out, a lot of things. In fact, I’d say the greater the differences between you and your target audience, the more you should prioritize user research and co-design in your company. The key reason is that as you start making product decisions, you begin baking assumptions into every requirement of your product, whether intentionally or not.

For example, I decided to condense the document of jobs produced by Jobscraper by adding URLs for users to view more about each job description. I had received emails like this myself and thought it’d be a good paradigm to copy. That is, until I realized most of my clients had slow Internet connections at home. Asking them to open the document and select every URL to find even basic details about the job was like asking someone on a wheelchair to use one of those ramps that turns into a staircase halfway through. So much for time saved on the job search!

• MISTAKE 2: Targeting the wrong success metric

Of course, job boards aren’t the only way to land a job. But I thought job fairs were too generalized, word of mouth networking had never worked for me, and staffing agencies always seemed to lowball their offers, so I assumed that career sites were the best way to find a job. And up until this point, my only experience getting jobs myself was by applying through websites.

The big problem: the kinds of jobs I applied for were not at all similar to the ones my clients were looking for. After comparing the outcomes of clients who applied to jobs online with those who talked to companies in person, it became evident that onsite interviews were way more effective in leading to job offers. I had spent all this effort trying to save clients time in filtering through job boards, but did that savings matter if they found more success at finding jobs at a job fair? I was so focused on making existing processes more efficient that I lost sight of the bigger goal—getting jobs. Had I realized this earlier, I probably would have built an entirely different product.

Figuring out the right success metric can be tricky, but it’s especially important when serving underserved communities, because it’s often not in for-profit companies’ best interest to serve people who have little purchasing power. Identifying a defensible metric that can align both business objectives and the goals of the customer is key to driving profit for the company while ensuring that customers aren’t taken advantage of.

• MISTAKE 3: Making decisions on behalf of users

Disclaimer: I saved this story for last because I find it really embarrassing, but I hope sharing it will prevent you from falling into the same trap.

A couple weeks into helping clients find jobs, I learned of employers that had toxic work environments or high turnover rates. I began to dissuade my clients from applying to those companies. When I saw problematic workplaces show up in the list of jobs generated by Jobscraper, I’d sometimes omit it from the document I sent to the client.

Reflecting back, it feels so apparent that this was wrong, but I see founders making similar mistakes all the time. I think this is a common issue, particularly when working with underserved populations, because the desire to help is why we get into the space to begin with. But who was I to decide for someone that they couldn’t apply to a job, when their ability to afford rent or food could’ve been on the line?

While it can be helpful to nudge users towards sustainable decisions through strategic UX patterns or information sharing, their decisions ultimately aren’t ours to make. The right decision needs to come from within, rather than from others. So I guess I can’t tell you what to do after reading this article. Nevertheless, I hope it can be useful in some way :)

Out of curiosity: what lessons did you learn from building your own startup? How did you overcome those challenges?

Upcoming events

• [VIRTUAL] May 30th, 12-1 pm EST: Blue Ridge Labs of Robin Hood launched Founder Fridays, a weekly series that features founders, investors, and experts working at the intersection of innovation of impact. Their next talk focuses on innovators creating more inclusive paths to economic security. RSVP: https://lu.ma/nrtp8v4u

• [NYC] June 3rd, 4-7 pm EST: Robin Hood’s Catalyst Demo Day features the work and accomplishments of founders in Robin Hood’s 2025 Catalyst accelerator program. RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/zgxkAgOCTHkCHz2w5Eaz

• [NYC] June 4th, 5:30-7:30 EST: COLLECTIVE IMPACT: Tech and AI for U.S. is a NYC Tech Week networking event hosted by KPMG and Firefly Innovations at CUNY’s School of Public Health. It marks the launch of Firefly’s flagship accelerator program and the debut of the Firefly Collective platform, which connects over 9,000 members across the public health innovation ecosystem. RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/x20X81uellv5NhT7dI1I

• [NYC] June 5th, 3-4:30 pm EST: Catalyst for Change: Tech Founders Tackling Tought Challenge is a social hour cohosted by Robin Hood, Samvid Ventures, and Maycomb Capital as part of NY Tech Week. RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/8ucVYttCWhhTnSa487ow

• [NYC] June 5th, 6-8 pm EST: AI and the Future of Government (Tech) is a panel hosted by AlleyCorp and Commonweal Ventures, focusing on how AI can strengthen government services across sectors like healthcare, housing, and energy. The event features government leaders, govtech startup founders, and investors discussing how to build government capacity at a time when we need government to be more effective. RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/kpIGQeQNQXxnOAoz9adR

• Have an event you’d like to promote? Reply back and I’ll add it to the next email.

Opportunities

• CareMessage is the technology non-profit building the largest patient engagement platform for low-income populations in the United States. They’re looking for a director of engineering.

• Propel is on a mission to empower low-income Americans by simplifying access to government benefits with modern technology. They’ve recently started hiring for a product manager, director of brand marketing, and head of sales and business development. See all their job openings here.

• Applications are now open for the 2025 Blue Ridge Labs Founder Fellowship! Are you an early-stage founder working on bold, tech-driven solutions to the biggest challenges facing low-income communities in the U.S.?

  Join Robin Hood Foundation's Blue Ridge Labs for a 20-week journey from idea to MVP. Applications close on June 8th. Learn more at their info sessions here.

• The Techstars Economic Mobility accelerator is looking for tech solutions that help low and moderate income Americans increase earnings and savings, reduce costs, and improve their quality of life. Applications are due June 11th.

• Got a job or funding opportunity you want to share? Reply back and I’ll add it to the next email.