Venture Everywhere Podcast: Joe Essenfeld with Jenny Fielding
Joe Essenfeld, founder and CEO of Fora chats with Jenny Fielding, Managing Partner of Everywhere Ventures on episode 69: Fora for Thought.
In episode 69 of Venture Everywhere, Jenny Fielding, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Everywhere Ventures, chats with Joe Essenfeld, founder and CEO of Fora, an AI platform that turns workplace conversations into real-time business insights. Joe shares his journey from early startup experiences to building Fora, where he combined HR tech expertise with early large language model (LLM) experiments to build a smarter way to run companies. Joe also discusses how Fora uses AI to turn everyday business chatter into actionable insights, accelerating decisions and challenging the role of traditional OKRs.
In this episode, you will hear:
How Fora leverages AI to solve alignment issues in real time.
Replacing traditional OKRs with continuous, automated tracking.
Blending future-of-work and ops intelligence beyond HR tech.
Linking daily work to company goals without extra process overhead.
Adapting to shifting product-market fit in a fast-changing landscape.
Delivering insights via push notifications, no dashboards needed.
If you liked this episode, please give us a rating wherever you found us. To learn more about our work, visit Everywhere.vc and subscribe to our Founders Everywhere Substack. You can also follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter for regular updates and news.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere Podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:34 Jenny: Welcome to Venture Everywhere where, today, we’re talking to Joe Essenfeld, the founder of Fora. Because we have such a long history together, maybe we could start at the beginning and hear a little bit more. Because when I first met you, we were at, I feel like that was one of the first co-working spaces in New York. So 2010, I put it at? 2009?
00:00:56 Joe: No. It was 2010 for sure. And it was Dogpatch Labs in The Village. I think it was on 12th Street.
00:01:02 Jenny: Yep. It was on 12th Street by University. And there were places where freelance people went before, WeWork, if people listening can even believe it. I know. Joe and I are old.
00:01:12 Jenny: But it really was one of the first places where it was strictly for product focused founders building scalable companies, really at the earliest stages of their journey and highly subsidized by a venture capital fund who wanted to get to know these founders. So I was lucky to meet you there sitting at the next table, and I remember a few things about you.
00:01:34 Jenny: I remember that you weren't a typical tech bro because there were a lot of them. Not necessarily in the space, but I had been out in San Francisco for a while. Actually, where I was at the first Dogpatch Labs, and it was bro town. And I was, “Oh, this guy is super sharp and very keyed into tech, but he wasn't a bro.” So that was point number one.
00:01:52 Joe: Thanks.
00:01:53 Jenny: The other thing I remember was that you had a lot of ideas. And so I just have this image of you jumping up. You'd have this idea and be like, “Let's whiteboard.” And I was like, “That's the guy who has a lot of ideas.” So that was point number two. Also very positive, because that was really fun.
00:02:07 Jenny: And then the third thing was that you had the, for lack of a better word, the chutzpah to name your company LocalBacon. Which I thought was both hilarious and wacky. And so those were the three things that stood out to me about you, Joe.
00:02:22 Joe: Oh, Jenny. That's awesome. It's such a good trip down memory lane. And not that I have to reciprocate, but I do remember you just being such a rock for the company you were engaged with there and how stabilized you made that chaotic startup life for who you were working with at the time.
00:02:37 Joe: It's funny. You mentioned the name LocalBacon. And Polaris ran that incubator and they ended up investing in LocalBacon. Peter Flint has now been a lifelong friend after that point. But I'll never forget the conversation we had with them when they said, “It's not that we won't fund you if you don't change your name, but it'll make it a lot easier.” So it ended up being good advice in the end.
00:02:57 Jenny: So tell us a little bit about the Jibe ride and what that was like and maybe how that informed what you're doing now at Fora.
00:03:04 Joe: So I was a very clueless first time tech founder as someone who's always been incredibly passionate about technology and building technology. I was involved with it as an undergrad at Cornell way early on. Talk about aging ourselves.
00:03:16 Joe: But that was in '99 at a company called Nightfunk. So I got my tech experience there. But then had a diversified background in hospitality, even including COO of Insomnia Cookies.
00:03:26 Jenny: I did not know that. Oh, my goodness. There's one literally on the Upper West Side where I live that I walk by still. And I'm like, “This company is still going?”
00:03:35 Joe: Oh, and speaking about someone with ideas, the founder of Insomnia, Seth Berkowitz, he was a visionary founder to work for. And it was just really incredible to see what he turned that business into.
00:03:43 Joe: I was there very early. So when I left, we only had 15 or 16 stores. And then Seth really grew that to the powerhouse it is today. But I'll never forget that smell of chocolate chunk cookies.
00:03:55 Jenny: Well, it does have this thing. You walk by it. It's on this little teeny little crack of a store on Amsterdam Avenue. But you walk by and no matter what you're doing, you smell it and you just turn. And even though I've walked by that thousands of times because I've lived here forever, it's just that gut reaction of “Cookies?”
00:04:12 Joe: That's by design. Every space has to pipe that smell outside. But just to get to the Jibe experience, that was a ten year experience and there were a lot of twists and turns.
00:04:24 Joe: LocalBacon started when micropayments were really popular and a new way to interact with business. So the original concept was job seekers deserve to know their application status. But employers deserve a little bit of skin in the game from those job seekers to make sure they deliver that.
00:04:40 Joe: So you could choose a job to apply and pay 99 cents to be guaranteed your authentic application status. And we built the technology to guarantee that there was authenticity where it's actually a recruiter updating it. And when they received an application from us, they were obligated to update your status with a certain SLA. So, really fun concept.
00:04:59 Joe: The ladders were really popular at the time. So this reverse subscription model had started to be popularized. But at the end of the day, enterprises had no interest in really figuring out how to provide that genuine feedback.
00:05:10 Joe: But really for them, they didn't want to take payment from job seekers. It just was more of an ethical issue. So that began a few pivots that we went through at Jibe to really get to the final area, the final company.
00:05:23 Jenny: So give us a few takeaways before we go into Fora from your experience. Because I always say to founders, “This is gonna be a long ride.” So what you read about in TechCrunch is not the founder experience. And so you spent over a decade building that company, which is actually more typical. I mean, you talked about Seth, Insomnia Cookies, which is still going.
00:05:42 Jenny: I think there's a perception because we read about some of these wacky cases where it's you're early in AI agents and you sell your company to Google and that happens within three years. But it doesn't happen to most of us. Most of us grind for a number of years. So tell us a few highlights from that journey or some of the learnings there.
00:06:00 Joe: Sure. And it is very true. And also adding to that story of the grinding is that we had a couple of early acquisition opportunities that didn't end up working out. And then being able to reconcile that as a founder and as a team, but still move forward and grind and build what you believe in, is really hard. That was one of the harder things to do.
00:06:17 Joe: And we went through that multiple times as a board and a company. But we're really happy with the outcome that happened to Vista and the iCIMS and a whole new network of friends.
00:06:24 Joe: But, Jenny, one of the big lessons from that experience to me was people talk a lot about value that investors can add, whether it's recruiting or other services their platform offers. But truly, it's the people that are in the room with you during that experience that matter the most. It's not so much the services.
00:06:43 Joe: So understanding that my second time around has really elevated my ability to understand the investors I wanna work with and also the people that I wanna bring into the company early on.
00:06:52 Jenny: So let's talk about how you built Fora. And you do mention getting the band back together, which is awesome. We love to see that. And you and I were reunited, which was fun to reconnect through our friend, Jay Levy. And it's been just great working with you the last couple of months. So tell us what the inspiration was for this and how you convinced other teammates to go on this crazy journey yet again.
00:07:14 Joe: Thanks. So the inspiration really came from having a great experience at iCIMS and understanding scale a lot better firsthand. I was there for four years. Really worked for some great leaders. Steve Lucas, awesome CEO. Colin Day, the founder, who I really admired as he built iCIMS.
00:07:32 Joe: But they helped me understand how companies really run differently when you have that type of scale. And also we work with some of the world's biggest companies like AWS and Microsoft and really provide a critical service to them.
00:07:44 Joe: So what I learned from that is that you can rely on metrics, dashboards and decks to really understand how the business is running. But if you need to make decisions faster, if you're in an environment that requires you to act in real time, what people are saying is truly the North Star of what's happening in your business. And I didn't truly appreciate that working in a VC backed startup where you knew everything going on just naturally.
00:08:10 Joe: But in a larger, more structured PE-backed environment, having that contextual understanding was so much harder to accomplish because of the scale of the business. So I had that understanding now as a leader in that business. And I got lucky enough to start experimenting with large language models before they exploded.
00:08:27 Joe: I was able to do that on the side. And I had this awakening that when you combine the two of them, what was being said in the business plus the power of LLMs, even early on, you had the ability to start killing things that really slowed businesses down that no one liked, like OKRs. I hate even saying it because everyone cringes from the executives that have to make it to the employees that have to figure out if they're making it or not.
00:08:50 Joe: The vision for Fora was if you're able to understand what's being said across the business in your chats and in your meetings and relate that to the goals of the company, you can have this real time view of what's happening that was never possible before.
00:09:02 Jenny: So the way it's done right now, you're saying, at many companies is that you have everyone completes their OKRs, they submit them to a manager, the manager looks at them and then submits them to someone else. And so that's how this gets synthesized? How would you say most companies are managing this when they don't have a product like Fora?
00:09:21 Joe: So most companies spend more time creating the OKRs than measuring them, which is the fundamental flaw with them. And also one of the biggest challenges with OKRs is that you usually have one executive who's on a mission to fix OKRs for the business. They spend six months to a year doing it, and then it doesn't get picked up again for year two. So you have these lags and gaps. It's just not a natural way to measure. The spirit of it makes sense.
00:09:45 Joe: So with Fora, what's different is that because of our HR tech background, we're able to add context to these conversations. There's this massive amount of unstructured data in a business.
00:09:56 Joe: But when you can start to structure it and have it start to make sense. This is what the CEO is saying, this is what the head of product is saying, this is what a designer is saying, this is what a customer is saying and you start to add all of that context to that raw conversation. And then have a loose idea of the goals, whether it be customer retention, quarterly bookings goals, customer support goals, and even cross silo.
00:10:18 Joe: When you start to have some visibility without having to go through the granular rigorous process of these detailed OKRs, the insights you can get everyday are incredible. And pushing them in front of people was another key. Because no one wants to dig into one more BI platform, especially if you're an individual contributor or if you're an executive backed up on emails and meetings.
00:10:37 Joe: So we figured out a way that we can push these alerts via email, via our iOS app to really put it in front of leaders and employees what's going on in the business that impacts them directly.
00:10:47 Jenny: Okay. So it's not that metrics aren't necessarily bad. It's that the synthesis of these metrics and then the distribution across the organization is just inherently broken. And so Fora can come and be the solution there?
00:11:01 Joe: Exactly. And what's cool is that businesses have already started to realize the power of this type of technology with companies like Gong. They were pioneers before AI was cool. They didn't even call it AI because they were afraid of the reputation of it. But they made sellers’ lives so much easier by taking sales conversations and putting it into the CRM automatically. See recruiting startups doing that for interviews.
00:11:20 Joe: So what Fora is really able to do is do that for operations across the entire business. Where what people are working on every day gets related to the goals of the company and the status of those gets updated as needed. So instead of waiting for the status meeting with tech to filter up the chain for people to react and hopefully identify what could be avoided, landmines get avoided in real time.
00:11:40 Joe: Companies are able to pivot and make decisions literally 10 times faster and save hundreds of thousands of dollars almost every week in avoided meetings to investigate what's actually going on because Fora pushes that to the right people at the right time.
00:11:53 Jenny: And what's the ideal company size, would you say? Probably not, as you mentioned, a 10-person startup, although, you never know. With distributed teams, it's an interesting idea. But where's your sweet spot?
00:12:06 Joe: So our sweet spot is around 500 to 5,000 employees, which is a huge sweet spot. But it's that type of scale that you really start to see the immediate value of a solution like Fora. And no customer's taken more than a week to go live. So it's a very simple implementation and all of our integrations are approved by Microsoft, Google, Zoom, Slack. So it's easy for CIOs, Office, to get us up and going.
00:12:28 Jenny: Looking at your first founder experience versus this one, it was a pretty unique moment in 2010, as I recall this renaissance in startups. But there wasn't a lot. There was Dogpatch Labs. There was a few little pockets here and there, but it wasn't like there were gazillions of startups.
00:12:44 Jenny: Fast forward all these years, fifteen years. And there's some amazing things about being in the second largest ecosystem in the world. But obviously, there's just a lot of competition. There's just a lot of noise. And so what have been some of the differences would you say building startup number two?
00:13:01 Joe: So when you talk about differences, is it more about for me personally or more in the ecosystem and environment?
00:13:07 Jenny: Well, we can talk about both. Let's start about the ecosystem. Just any headwinds, tailwinds. Just things that are just different this time. I mean, we were so naive in 2010. None of our friends were building startups. I bet most of your friends from Cornell weren't building startups. Most of my friends from Columbia were not building startups.
00:13:23 Jenny: We were just figuring it out, and we all roughly knew each other, and there was a very helping environment. But people, for the most part, thought we were crazy. Everyone thought that whatever job we'd left, “Yeah. Good luck.”
00:13:36 Joe: And actually, I think that keys in on some of the biggest differences. As a first time founder and the first go round, I think I really embraced that this is a crazy thing to do. And I was single at the time, living in the East Village with a cat. So 90% of my breathing moments were spent being a crazy founder in the New York startup ecosystem.
00:13:55 Joe: And I was figuring out how to navigate that as much as navigating building a business. And that's really the biggest difference this time around. It's not so much being married with kids. Because I'm still spending almost 90% of my waking hours on Fora right now. But I'm very much more focused on building the business and the company versus navigating the ecosystem.
00:14:14 Joe: There are many, many more investors right now than there were before. But there are also even more companies trying to raise that funding now. So I think the bigger challenge is differentiating how Fora is different than all of the other businesses out there versus back in 2010. It was like, “Why are you even trying to do this? Does VC even exist anymore, especially in New York?” So it's a really interesting narrative shift that I've noticed so far.
00:14:39 Jenny: I mean, don't you remember everyone used to tell us if you wanna build a software company, you need to move to San Francisco. And I feel like everyone in that office was just, “Well, screw that. There's a lot going on here.” I mean, there wasn't VC. But there was plenty of cash. Although, how funny is it that many of us had to go to Boston to raise, whereas that really flipped.
00:14:58 Jenny: Now you don't hear founders being like, “Oh, I'm going to Boston to raise.” Although Boston is a great ecosystem, there's a lot of capital here. It was definitely different times back then.
00:15:07 Jenny: So talk about technology and technology shifts. You obviously couldn't have built this company with what you had access to in 2010. And you talk about being early experimenting with LLM. So give us a little bit of your take on AI and some of the power that that unlocks more generally and then for customers.
00:15:26 Joe: Sure. And I think it's really important to note that just the maturity of the cloud providers allows us to unlock what AI can offer. I remember in our first startup, we were on Rackspace and then we moved to AWS. And just the overhead of keeping the server alive and proper load balancing and security, that was two people's full time jobs.
00:15:47 Jenny: Wait. Don't you also remember we owned servers? We could go visit them.
00:15:52 Joe: Yes. You had metal.
00:15:54 Jenny: Remember David and I going to this place on the West Side Highway and being like, “Those are our servers.”
00:15:59 Joe: You gotta be proud of it. Make sure those cables are tightly connected. I think that without that unlock of the cloud and good documentation of how to use that cloud and scale it up, there's no way we could have gotten to AI and deployed it that way. So I think that's really important to note. And I actually think that's the biggest cost savings of capital efficient startups today.
00:16:19 Joe: Now, what AI brought to the table and specifically LLMs is really the ability to take unstructured data and find meaning in it. And that's something that is just hugely valuable to Fora and our customers.
00:16:32 Joe: Now, clearly, there's a lot of people using LLMs for coding and creating the software, which is a whole another offering. All of our engineers do use AI in some point of their workflow except one who does our back end. He’s a co-founder of mine, and he's still faster than AI. So it doesn't make sense for him to use it. But everyone else uses it to supplement more so than code.
00:16:51 Joe: But really the big unlock for us, Jenny, is what it does with our customers' data and how it allows us to really use all of our integration knowledge and expertise, use all the context we have and proprietary data, which is key. And then use the LLM to analyze it in a way that you would have needed a team of a hundred people to do previously to get the type of insights we're getting.
00:17:11 Jenny: I think back in the day, like 2010 when we first met, there weren't a lot of people around that wanted to help us. I think we all helped each other a little bit. Now, there's just, not only people that spend their time mentoring because they're just so successful that they wanna give back, but there's many generations of entrepreneurs who've been really successful that you can lean on or tap into.
00:17:32 Jenny: You mentioned that you tapped into or you found some great investors who I think have backed you multiple times at this point. You don't have to give me their names, but any notable people that helped you along the way or impacted your journey?
00:17:44 Jenny: I know for me, running my startup, it was just hard to find those people. People that you could trust that would give you honest feedback that really didn't have an ulterior motive. And so I feel like there's just a lot more of them now.
00:17:56 Joe: I agree. I mean, I think the first time around, I got very lucky. Because the investor group that came together for Jibe, we went through a lot as we went through the pivots and the business evolved. And we became a very tight knit group.
00:18:09 Joe: So for my new company, Fora, I was able to bring a lot of those folks back together. Really everyone who is still actively investing in early stage came back together for Fora for our pre-seed. And it was great to be able to work directly with you this time around too, and the whole Everywhere team. But Converge led our seed. Nilanjana led my Series B at Jibe so having that relationship. She was with a different fund then.
00:18:31 Joe: But also executives, I'd say that was really former customers and former coworkers whose career continued to mature at other companies working directly with private equity or strategic acquirers of other businesses. Being able to rely on them as we built the product and get real time feedback on something that was half baked, that was just absolutely critical.
00:18:51 Joe: Going from zero to something happened in a much faster time because we had access to those executives and their expertise and willingness to share it with really no ulterior motives.
00:19:00 Jenny: That's awesome. I feel like many founders don't have that. They have very adversarial or difficult relationships. And they don't have the right mentors or people surrounding them. Again, now I feel like there's more people to help.
00:19:13 Jenny: But definitely back in the day, it was tough. I know we had some tough investors in our startup and it's a little chip on your shoulder of working with people again. So it's pretty cool that you were able to have those investors support you again and that they've been such a great support system for you.
00:19:28 Joe: I appreciate it. For me as a founder, I struggled a lot in the beginning. But then when I understood what investors have to do with their LPs, I felt like it was a lot easier to get along with them. Where their job wasn't to serve me. Their job was to serve their LPs and their companies.
00:19:41 Joe: And when you understood that dual role, for me, at least it helped so much with our board and investor dynamics. And then we really started to get a healthy relationship back and forth. So that was a lesson that took a while, but definitely a helpful one.
00:19:53 Jenny: Okay. So at the beginning, I said there were these three things that I remembered about you. One was not being a bro. What I really meant by that was you were very welcoming and just a nice presence or person. And you're obviously so articulate and fun and interesting to talk to. What do you think your superpower is?
00:20:11 Jenny: Because you seem so natural at sales. And, again, that idea of bringing people into the fold. But you're also a product person. If you had to distill it down to the thing you think that you do best, where would it land?
00:20:23 Joe: I'm not sure what I do best, but I know what makes me feel something that's really intense. And it tends to be the foundation of the companies that I'm involved with. It's a hyperfocus mode that I'll go into when there's a specific problem that really grabs me.
00:20:38 Joe: And I focused a little bit to understand that feeling more and it's definitely a lot of dopamine and a lot of energy and adrenaline. But the way that I'm wired when there is a problem to be solved.
00:20:47 Joe: And for Fora, it really was how do we take something as unstructured and chaotic as what's being said in meetings and turn that into a C-suite level insight that's valuable to the ELT and the board, but also the whole company.
00:21:02 Joe: Before we had any funding or anything else, it was just days with my co-founders working days and weeks where I just didn't feel like I'd pick up. I've just focused on that problem. How do we turn something chaotic into something useful? And it just feels so good while you're in it. And I really appreciate my family and friends because they see me get into that mode and they're able to give me space now.
00:21:20 Joe: But it's a double-edged sword because I definitely can get in that mode on something that's not as useful. So as I've matured a little bit as a founder and CEO, I've had to recognize sometimes to pull myself out of that mode and do an honest assessment.
00:21:33 Joe: But for building companies and going from an idea to execution, that's critical. Without that hyperfocus and ability to get there, there's no way I would have been able to build Jibe or Fora.
00:21:44 Jenny: That's a good one. Better than not being a bro. I like it.
00:21:48 Joe: Well, I think that's really important too. Because that culture and healthy companies, they do better.
00:21:53 Jenny: Yeah. But you know what I mean. I feel like I was the only woman who worked in that co-working space and you guys sat right behind me. I was just part of the team. You were so nice and welcoming.
00:22:01 Joe: Thanks.
00:22:02 Jenny: I've been in other places where I just felt a little bit out of sorts. So I always appreciated that. So I joke. But I do think that is a superpower. You're very welcoming to your orbit.
00:22:12 Jenny: Okay. Getting back to AI, it's hard to keep up. And so every day I read, there's a new philosophy. So now ARR is dead and what's gonna happen to SaaS companies and whatnot. So this business that you're running right now, there's gonna be twists and turns based on forces that you have no control over.
00:22:30 Jenny: I guess that it's always a sense with that with startups. But maybe the last generation of startups had a little more time to figure out product-market fit. Then once they had it, it didn't necessarily go away.
00:22:40 Jenny: And this idea of product-market fit is really changing because the market is just changing so quickly. So how are you guys thinking about staying ahead and rolling with what happens?
00:22:51 Joe: I think the key to this is to not be so sensitive to the changing sands. I do think the most important part of building a business is happy customers and happy customers that are financially stable. So I saw it happen in two different waves of tech where startups found product-market fit with other startups. And they went from zero to hero and hero to zero in a blindingly fast pace.
00:23:17 Joe: This market is a little bit hard to ignore when you see amazing companies like Cursor and Lovable going from zero to hundred plus million of ARR or revenue, whatever we wanna call it, run rate revenue versus recurring revenue so quickly. And it's hard not to want to chase that.
00:23:32 Joe: But I'm more of a B2B2C founder, so it's not as much on our radar. We're so focused on building relationships with our customers, starting at a fair price and fair value with the expectation we're gonna grow both in their adoption, but also in costs over time.
00:23:47 Joe: So it may not be as the velocity that some of these newer AI-fueled startups are getting, but I have a long term view. I'm joining this company. I had all the discussions I needed to. This is a decade or more commitment before even picking my head up for any type of outcome.
00:24:02 Joe: So that's the view. That's what I'm in it for this time around. And I think it's all about making your customers love you so they tell other customers. Because that's the cheapest form of customer acquisition, when you can get it from another customer. And also so they can continue to invest in the platform itself.
00:24:15 Jenny: Makes sense. So give us a little insight into what's next for Fora. What are some of the product updates or partnerships or things that you can talk about that you're excited about?
00:24:25 Joe: Oh, for sure. So starting with the product, just because that's an easy place to start and it's a passion for me. We really wanted to invest in the push of our alerts. And we heard a lot of requests from our customers that they wanted to hear a podcast format. That they wanted to have really condensed updates spoken to them.
00:24:43 Joe: So thanks to AI, we were able to build an iOS app for incredibly efficient, low cost. And it actually creates highlight reels of meetings in your org. So because we understand the org chart and where you sit and who reports to you or who works with you on your team, you can take at some point in the day five minutes and just let Fora play highlights from you for meetings around the business that matter directly to you. And it's just so cool.
00:25:07 Jenny: That's so cool. I love that.
00:25:09 Joe: Thank you.
00:25:10 Jenny: All day, you can just be listening in. It's like you're a fly on the wall. But you don't have to be at the meeting and no one wants to be in these meetings.
00:25:17 Joe: Yes. Thank you. And the best part is we filter out all the personal stuff. You're not hearing about pets and vacations and school drop off. You're hearing about what matters to you and it's this 30 to 45-second clip just like you catch the Yankee game or whatever sport you're a fan of.
00:25:33 Joe: So that took a lot of time and really just getting user feedback to adjust the right altitude. But now it's starting to work and get traction. That’s just an amazing feeling to have when you start to see that product adoption happen. So that's one.
00:25:45 Joe: And then the second product piece is Green, Yellow, Red. This again came from a lot of our users who are like, “Oh, such a cool update about my roadmap delivery or about customer satisfaction versus sales. But can you make it green, yellow, red? You’ll make it easier for me to understand what's good and what's bad.”
00:26:01 Joe: So that's something we're really excited to work into the platform. Just to make it easier for your brain to be like, “Okay. I'm about to read something that I should be concerned about or I'm about to read something that's exciting and positive.”
00:26:13 Joe: And we're just learning so much about how people think and operate in their business because of the feedback they're giving us of how they wanna consume information. So those are two product updates that are either in production or actively being tested with their users right now.
00:26:25 Jenny: I love that. I mean, people just want information distilled. And ultimately, they just need to know if it's a hair on fire that they need to go deal with or it's just something brewing or everything is great.
00:26:36 Joe: Exactly. And then customer wise, we have an amazing Lighthouse enterprise customer, IDC. And they're just very excited about what we're doing. So we're gonna do some joint research with them and really continue to invest in that partnership. And we're very fortunate to have such a strong early relationship with such a meaningful enterprise.
00:26:52 Jenny: Are you guys grouped in with HR tech?
00:26:55 Joe: So there's definitely a future of work movement that we're getting grouped in with. Some of our investors are really prolific future of work investors like Acadian. But I think for us, the most important thing we're doing is automating the understanding of how the business is operating today.
00:27:12 Joe: And I think that really squarely helps the COO, CFO, or operationally minded CEO and their surrounding orbit. So sometimes in larger companies like at the 5,000 plus, we’re seeing that be kicked down a couple levels of seniority. But a lot of the times now the CHRO has a seat at that table too. So I think my answer is yes. We're definitely a future of work company. And because of the HR tech connections, we're getting a lot of pull from there as well.
00:27:37 Jenny: All right, well, we're gonna wrap it up with our speed round. So just quick answers here. But is there a book or podcast or streaming that you are really enjoying right now?
00:27:48 Joe: Yeah, well, I had the privilege of seeing Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway. So I read that beforehand. And even though it's about business, it was really nice sometimes to take a step back and read something more literature like.
00:28:00 Joe: Because I'm just so inundated between what I'm reading online and listening to the podcast about category creation and companies that I admire that I have to step back. And then seeing it on Broadway too at the same time, that was really special.
00:28:12 Jenny: So fun. If you could live anywhere in the world for one year, so take a one year sabbatical, where would it be?
00:28:19 Joe: Well, I'd have to say Bora Bora.
00:28:21 Jenny: We've done a hundred podcasts. First podcast guest to say Bora Bora.
00:28:25 Joe: All right. There we go. It's the belly button of the world, of Earth. And it truly feels like being on another planet. So it's a lot easier than space travel. So I'd say that's where I would go. I'd want my family to be with me.
00:28:36 Jenny: Everyone can come along. All right. I'll come visit. Bora Bora on the list. Favorite productivity hack aside from using Fora?
00:28:43 Joe: Well, you took the words out of my mouth.
00:28:45 Jenny: I know. What are you using to stay organized?
00:28:48 Joe: I actually think my favorite productivity hack is having as many conversations on text as possible. For me, that just is such a fast reply. It's like a yes, no punt on text. And I think it's tried and true with customers. It’s just a great way to communicate. So I have all the productivity tools. We're obsessed with their work. But for me personally, getting a lot of work done on text tends to move things along faster.
00:29:11 Jenny: I love it. And where can listeners find you?
00:29:14 Joe: So I'm on LinkedIn at Essenfeld. And that's probably the best way to find me. And shoot me a message, I'll get right back to you. But really love engaging with listeners, other entrepreneurs. So, Jenny, thank you so much for having me on. This was just an awesome opportunity. And great to work with you again and the whole Everywhere team.
00:29:30 Jenny: So fun. Yeah. We feel very lucky to be involved with you guys and thanks for joining us.
00:29:34 Joe: Thanks.
00:29:36 Scott Hartley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoy today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first check pre seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe, and we'll catch you on the next episode.
Read more from Joe Essenfeld in Founders Everywhere.