Fifteen

Not many people have the opportunity to spend two years and 150K to figure out what they want to do with their lives. While not in the orientation pack, many have come to realize the career process goes something like this. First, you convince yourself and a panel of admissions experts that you know what you want to do with your life. Upon arrival you are immediately drop kicked into a black hole of opportunities other people think you should want. If you’re lucky, at the end of two years, you escape back to what drove you to come to MIT Sloan in the first place – with that much more conviction. In that sense I consider myself lucky. I came to MIT Sloan to start a company, got distracted, but in the end I’m going to start a company.

Our start-up is called Assured Labor; we help workers in developing countries to get jobs using mobile phones (www.assuredlabor.com). Though we don’t yet have real funding, I consider us to be a MIT Sloan success story. Why, because we did all those things in the admissions brochure. You know, took some great courses, did the 100K, cross registered at the Media Lab, learned a little Mandarin and made some incredible friends. Better yet, we did the Japan trek, PT China, Silicon Valley, Vegas, C-functions, E-Lab, G-Lab, and on and on. We also did a lot of things that weren’t in the admissions brochure, like the Oktoberfest trip, the Beacon Hill Pub (BHP), and even received grants to do field research in Rio de Janeiro.

But let’s get back to the start-up, the idea for Assured Labor came to me while I was at the BHP and was based on my international travels, while at MIT Sloan and before.
Joseph Bamber MBA ’08, teammate and friend, talked me into joining the Developmental Entrepreneurship course at the Media Lab while we were at a C-Function. Through this course Matt Albrecht MBA ’08 and Ximena Fernandez Ordonez Harvard KSG MPA ’08 joined the team. Our trip together to Rio really validated our concept and brought the team together as only Caipirinhas and hang gliding really can.

Brazil opened our eyes to intricacies of labor issues at the bottom of the pyramid and to the desperate need for greater efficiency and transparency in that market. Yet, these lessons do not come without risk. With our NGO guides, the Assured Labor team trekked into some of the most dangerous favelas on earth including Complexo Alemão – made famous in the documentary “Favela Rising”. So what does a group of MIT and Harvard grad students do after driving past strung-out 12 year olds with machine guns? You guessed it, focus groups. It sounds crazy, and most of the people from Rio that knew we were going to Alemão thought we were just that, but this is where our potential customers live. 99% of people living in favelas are good honest workers. Yet, employers (in the good part of town) are afraid that if they hire someone from favelas they’ll end up with someone dangerous – and they don’t want to take that risk. Our solution will provide assurances to employers that they are getting the right worker. If we can get it right, the potential is tremendous.

Upon returning to MIT our team was fortunate enough to win the Executive Summary Competition and later make it to the semi-finals of the Business Plan Competition for the Development track. Better still, we met our fifth founder as a result, Sidd Goyal MIT M. Eng. ’03. We also started working with our exceptional interns through the D-Lab II course and the VentureShips program. These nine students, ranging from PhDs to undergrads have exhibited remarkable enthusiasm for our company and its mission.

While graduation isn’t until June, our team has already begun to work on Assured Labor full time. While it was frightening to turn down my ideal job offer to pursue a yet-to-be funded start-up I know it will turn out to be the right decision. After all, how many times in life do you get the chance to work with friends to build a company that can improve the lives of millions of people around the world?