ARTEMIS: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Greater Than Code. I am Artemis Starr and I am here with my fabulously cool friend, Jamey Hampton.

JAMEY: Thanks, Arty. And I am here with my friend, Chante Thurmond.

CHANTE: Hey, everyone, I have the great pleasure of introducing the one and only Ruben Harris. Ruben, welcome to the show.

RUBEN: Thank you for having me.

CHANTE: It's our pleasure. There's lots going on. I know you're super busy, but I would love to start off with a bio because I don't have one to read. And I think you could probably introduce yourself, and probably better than I could. So, I'd love for you to give kind of a high level overview and a bio, if you wouldn't mind.

RUBEN: Yes. I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of Career Karma. For people that don't know, Career Karma is a marketplace that matches career transitioners to job training programs so they can get high paying jobs in tech in less than a year. I'm also a co-host of a podcast called Breaking Into Startups, which is the world's largest podcast in the world for people breaking into tech. Before that, I worked at three different startups. I'm an education, healthcare, politics. Before that, I was in investment bank for three years and I've been playing the cello since I was four years old, so more than 25 years. I'll be 30 years by next year. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

CHANTE: You're awesome.

JAMEY: I agree.

CHANTE: That was a great bio. I love it. We always start off cue with a secondary question, which is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it?

RUBEN: What does my superpower? I always say I believe in people more than they believe in themselves, and I have the ability to help them realize that. And once they reach that level of potential, they do it for the people. So I think I've done a good job of doing that for my whole life. And once I meet people, it's not for personal gain. It's to help the greater collective get better. So I just approach that individual to help other people get better. So if I was going to sum it up in a word, I'm a good organizer. And the way that I organize people is by motivating them and helping them discover who they really are.

CHANTE: Ooh, that's a good superpower to have right about now. We could go there if you want or we could wait. But I think that that's an interesting way to kind of reference yourself because I feel like I've heard some other podcasts. I listen to you guys on your podcast, but I've heard your story maybe more so than others. And I definitely would say that you are an organizer or a convener, a person who leverages people's superpowers. But I'm curious if you wouldn't mind going into maybe how you think you actually develop that. Did you learn that growing up? Did your parents instill that in you? Was it a series of personal experiences that got you there? What do you think helped fortify that superpower?

RUBEN: I definitely think I have a natural belief in myself, but I do think that like my father and my mother's big example is part of the reason why I'm able to do what I do. For example, my father, he's a black man, but he speaks Spanish, French, Portuguese and Chinese. And he would do it with ease while he was working. So he would just like put on Chinese for Dummies audio book in the car on the way to work. And then he would buy himself a Chinese Spanish Bible and then go to Chinese church on the weekend and then practice speaking Chinese with his patients and they're like [inaudible] by the end of the year. I'm like, "I could actually learn this with him." So it's interesting because anything that my dad and my mom set their mind to, they just do it. They just set a deadline and it's done. And so, they kind of actually instilled it to me as a child. And what they told me is that children are able to do things that people find hard to do as adults because they've never been told that it was hard. They just kind of like to do it. So, for example, I'm four years old and I'm surrounded by a bunch of other four years that are playing cello at a high level, then like, "I'm just going to do that." And then I'm going to play in the sandbox after. So I think that your environment and your upbringing as a child and especially as an adult matters a lot. So I'll say my environment and my parents and then also being in Atlanta, like in Atlanta, you've probably heard me say this, black people aren't a minority. And so, I never felt weird to be black. I've always been proud to be black. And I've always had successful black people around me. I've always had my whole family work smart. The women in my family are leaders. They not always like doctors or in medicine or anything like that. We do have a lot of those. But it does not matter what your profession is. If you have pride in your work and you work hard, and you do it and you think deeply about your spiritual message and you've been given what your purpose is and you work at it, you'll never work a day in your life. Work has never been something that's tedious for me, even though it is hard.

CHANTE: Wow, that is great. Your parents definitely raised you with some amazing values and ethics. Maybe I should call you because my kids are going to be home for the next four weeks. Got Career Karma for kids yet? [Laughs] 

RUBEN: Yeah. That would be cool. I do want to do things like that in the future.

CHANTE: Let's do it. I want to hear more about it, but I'm not going to hog the time, I'm sure Arty and Jamey are dying to ask you a question, so I'm going to let them do that real quick.

ARTEMIS: I have so many thoughts, but I'm kind of wondering where to take this. I've spent some time in Atlanta and we've had a number of folks on the show just talking about the reality check of what it's like to be black in America and this dynamic of whiteness and being raised in a position of privilege and at the same time being unaware of that. And I've also had these contrasting experiences with going to Anguilla, which is fascinating to me, because it's an island that is predominantly black. And here you have a group of people that are thriving as a community. And it's like, "Oh, this is what black traditions and heritage look like in a thriving community." And you really see a lot of those dynamics. And now with all the things going on right now, it could become very loud. And you kind of got to decide, "Am I going to turn the other way?"

RUBEN: I think a lot of these kinds of conversations in our history in the world especially in America, people overly focus on race, kind of like assuming that one race is more [frivolous] than another. I think it's false to assume that white people are always frivolous because actually most of the poor people in America are actually white. And it's also false to assume that black people aren't frivolous because there's definitely frivolous black people. I also think that when we talk about privilege and racial dynamics, I think it's important to incorporate things that are bigger than race or even sex. I like the word underestimated which we're talking about a lot because in Career Karma, the people that download the app are underestimated. What I liked about the word underestimated is that it includes people from different religions, includes people with disability, includes people that are veterans, it includes people that are older, and includes people that are formerly incarcerated and so on and so forth. And those are the people that come and download the Career Karma app looking to get a career to change their life. The other thing that I like about the word underestimated is it puts the negative energy on the person that's underestimating them, but also puts the individual in the advantageous position. Because if you are underestimating me, then it's easy for me to exceed your expectations. And that gives me confidence to be able to understand that I can dominate anyone that I want to. So I think bringing it back to the community that we serve, we know that we can't predict what jobs are going to be created in the future. We know that some of them are going to be destroyed because of technology. And so, Career Karma will always take people with the need, assess them, then match them to the best job training programs for them forever and ever so they can make the most important career decisions.

ARTEMIS: I like this so much. What I'm hearing is this shift in focus to essentially what are your spiritual gifts that you can take pride in? What finding your own purpose and seeing the potential in yourself that what you can rise to and these projections of the world toward you as underestimating your potential. And then when you go and conquer those things and you rise above those expectations, those projections, you prove that you are more than those labels. You prove yourself knowing to yourself such that you can then shift to a place of embracing and giving back with your own gifts in the world that we've all got.

RUBEN: Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of times when you do conquer something, let's say that you're trying to get money and then you get there, the big question will be like, that you ask yourself right now, that I will conquer that or I will overcome that self-doubt. Or I've got this money or I got this car, I got this house, I got this family, what do I do now? That's why understand what your why is, it's super important? While we kind of like tell people we're not teaching them how to work for companies, we'll tell them we'll teach them how to work for each other. There has to be a deeper purpose. There has to be something else that you're striving for, which is why everybody that downloads the Career Karma app has a coach and it's put into a group called a squad where they can meet with other people of similar interests. They can have a common ground and experience similar problem, overcoming similar problems, and then they use their superpowers and develop it to get these jobs to create solutions that could scale to millions of people.

ARTEMIS: You said that you help people to believe in themselves. And I'm wondering if there's a story you can share of a memory that you saw something like that happen where you help someone to believe in themselves. 

RUBEN: The first person that downloaded the Career Karma app and got placed into a coding bootcamp is a guy named Jerrick Warren. You can hear his story on the Breaking Into Startups Podcast. He's a black man, he's a single dad. And when we placed him into a bootcamp, he had a lot of self-doubt. But he got the confidence to start and going through. But then there was actually a situation where his child broke his arm and he couldn't take care of the child because he didn't have the bills. And he had to, like, humble himself and ask his mother if she could take care of him. And he was thinking about not finishing his program, that he had been matched with through Career Karma because of it and just getting a regular job. Long story short, we explained to him the opportunity cost of stopping his momentum and deciding to do something else, which was backwards growth. And long story short, he ended up getting a job that paid almost $150,000 in less than a year. So, having people think about those tradeoffs whenever they wanted [inaudible] in their life, recognize how to evaluate important career decisions or even life decisions like how you're going to take care of your baby's broken arm or the things that we face every day.

JAMEY: I think what's really striking to me about that story and about kind of the whole concept of what you've been talking about is you mentioned early on about how growing up in Atlanta and being around a lot of successful black people put you in this kind of life situation to feel confident about yourself in that way. And so, when you talk about helping individual people, it's kind of like you have this double helping. You're helping individual people in a very real way with them in their personal lives and whatever is going on with them. But then I think you get kind of this double dose of also you're helping other people who will see them being successful and get confidence from that indirectly, which I think is really cool and amazing.

RUBEN: Yeah. I think another reason why I am the way I am is because I'm grateful for these opportunities. Like I've grown up in Atlanta, I've also been exposed to different things and I've gotten multiple chances at life when I made decisions that could have taken me the wrong way. Honestly, I shouldn't be alive right now, just given so many near-death experiences that I've experienced. And when people tell you that you're chosen or that there must be a reason why God chose you to stay alive, then the fires are gonna be lit inside you. And I haven't really been public about things like that about what happened. But essentially, you just know that there's been multiple near-death experiences that fires inside me and I feel like there's a responsibility for me to work hard and use every ounce of my energy to help other people. I know I'm doing what I was meant to do in life.

CHANTE: I love that, Ruben. This is Chante again. I feel the same way. And I knew that about you because I can tell by the work that you're doing. How does it feel to make such an impact in such a short amount of time? Because I don't know if the listeners know, but you all haven't been at this for all that long, but you've had huge success. Would you mind maybe giving us the backstory to the origin of Career Karma, who you started it with and the short timeframe that you've been in operation, all the things you've been able to accomplish thus far?

RUBEN: Yeah, we launched the Career Karma app last year, January with my co-founders, Artur and Timur Meyster, they're twin brothers that also went through coding bootcamps and got jobs as software engineers in about five months. Our app are now, I guess, about 10,000 or 15,000 people downloaded the app every single month. And we have a directory of over 450 schools that you all could check out at CareerKarma.com/schools. So, we have a strong position to where people trust us for guidance to where they want to go. And the reason why trust is important when it comes to figuring out which job training program is best for you is because there's a lot of people that plan to get to a job, but they don't and they charge you a lot of money for it. And then you end up being scammed. So, people want to talk to people that know what's going on. But even then, people don't get anywhere without other people. That's no such thing [inaudible]. My co-founders and I personally had been through the pain of doing this because we moved to Silicon Valley or San Francisco in 2014 from Atlanta, Georgia. I met my co-founders in Atlanta and we decided to do this journey together.

My co-founders did a bootcamp called Hack Reactor and App Academy. I worked at AltSchool, Honor and Hustle. And then my first co-founder worked at a company called Funding Circle all the way into IPO, which is a fintech startup. And the other one was an augmented reality startup. I'm an auto trader as well. I mean, we felt that it was super important for us to learn and experience what it's like working in these companies ourselves.

We actually didn't have the idea for Career Karma when we moved out to San Francisco in 2014. We just wrote a story about it called Breaking Into Startups. That blew up and got millions of views. And that story turned into another story called The Reality of Breaking into Startups: The First Product You Build Is Yourself, which turned into a podcast, which is what I mentioned before, Breaking Into Startups. That led to a chatbot, that led to the Career Karma app that you all are using today. So, I think now that we are in this position, not only do we have a podcast, but we're producing about 100 to 200 articles a month and we drop about two to three YouTube videos a week. And we're positioning ourselves not just to be the number one destination for career advice for bootcamps, but also and more importantly, the number one destination for career advice on the Internet.

The Career Karma app is free, will always be free. The only thing that we ask people is if they get any value out of the app, that they share it with others and that they're willing to help other people behind them in the future.

CHANTE: Well, that is fantastic. And maybe to the point, I mean, you're doing so many amazing things. You've definitely earned your way to doing that. But maybe it will be helpful to tell everyone who might be listening and thinking, "Wow, this is something I could either try to do," not necessarily replicate it. But you're able to make this a number one destination in terms of career advice and make it for free, because you also were able to secure funding, which I think is really amazing because you moved to San Francisco, you got jobs, you learned the industry. And even from the time you decided to actually create this app, there was a short turnaround in terms of all those things happening and securing seed investment and then whatever else you've done to raise and to earn money thus far. I think it's incredible. And I would love to sort of hear a little bit of that on this show, if you wouldn't mind.

RUBEN: Before we raised our seed round, we actually applied to Y Combinator and got rejected. And then we had to raise a small angel round, which was about $150,000 is about what we started off with the dummy, ended up closing about a little over $300,000. Then we applied again to Y Combinator.  After launching and having a product and earning revenue, then we applied again, and then got into Y Combinator, which is the world's largest tech accelerator for the people that don't know. And then went to 2019, which is March 2019, we did Demo Day, which was the first Demo Day in San Francisco. We were the first ones to open that up. And then we raised a seed round of about $1.5 million which brought us to about a total of about $2 million in May. And we were able to get funding from some of the biggest venture capitalists in the world. So, not only are we connected to pretty much every major tech company, we also are funded by the best tech investors in the world. And it is our vision, or it is our goal to make sure that everybody that downloads the app instantly has access to our network and is able to become [inaudible].

CHANTE: That's amazing. Was that important to you? Was funding or securing funding from people who aligned with your morals and values and your bigger vision?

RUBEN: Yeah. It's important for our cap table, our investors to reflect the world just like our community does. So our investors are majority women of color and we have people across the board from every religion, every background, every sex. Not every sex or every religion, but essentially a nice representation that we think will reflect the world. It is super important for us to have people that don't want to just build this number one destination for career on the Internet that it eventually becomes the world's largest staffing firm, but also ask people that are about it as well. The majority of people that download our app are women and the majority of people in Career Karma are parents. So, family is super important to us [inaudible] invested as part of our family.

CHANTE: That's amazing. I think that one thing we kind of know too is that women, particularly women of color are the ones who are head of household. So there's a lot of spend and opportunity there. So I think that's brilliant. And I'm hoping that as you have more people successfully go through a coding bootcamp, get a job, that they will remember Career Karma and get back to the ecosystem that you're building. I wanted to just learn a little bit more, too, about these women that are downloading the app. When they do that, one, are you collecting all that information on the front end? And how engaging or forthcoming are they with you about, in addition to their gender, like their race, ethnicity, background? Are they sharing any of those information or that data with you, Ruben?

RUBEN: Everybody has a profile in the app. We're not collecting it like that. You can see their pictures, [inaudible] can see that. But if you want to hear the stories from them, you can actually go to the community tab in the app. And there's a discussion. The discussion will live on the Web as well. But essentially, these women are sharing their stories, especially in the discussion called 20/20 Vision. We have our own internal forum inside of the career where people share their stories. And so women every day are sharing what their plans are for twenty, twenty and four different years. So that's been a very good source of truth, not just for women, but also men as well. To pay attention to the discussions is also a good place for people to get technical questions answered, to find jobs, to get mental health support or confidence, to share resources like laptops with each other if they don't have a laptop. And that's been pretty interesting to see that take off.

CHANTE: Yeah, for sure. And it's not to say that there's been little pockets of different communities that have tried these things. But I mean, yours is so unique and it's been successful. What do you think is the differentiating factor that makes that possible?

RUBEN: I think that when you build anything, a question you want to ask yourself is like, are you the best person in the world to do this or to solve this problem? And I can definitively say that there's no one in the world more qualified to solve this problem than myself and my team. Like I said before, we've been through this before. And so, we recognize that the only differentiator with the startup and any other company is growth. And it's important to not just grow, but also to quickly iterate and experiment a lot. So at Career Karma, we have a culture of experimentation and we're running many, many experiments every day and looking at the numbers every night and then making a change every day to those experiments based off of the different hypotheses or theories that we have about whatever it is that we're trying to validate. 

And so I think our speed of iteration, in addition to our velocity, in addition to our unique and unfair advantage, is what makes us good at what we do. And that's why we know that nobody will be able to touch us in this department.

CHANTE: Awesome. Thank you for that.

RUBEN: Thank you. I know that was very aggressive. But it's the truth.

[Laughter]

JAMEY: Actually it sounds like you believe in yourself.

CHANTE: That's right. It's not aggressive at all. 

JAMEY: That actually kind of does lead back into what I wanted to ask, which is actually a question for both Ruben and for Chante, in a way, because I wanted to go back to something you said earlier, Ruben, which was that you said, "I'd know that I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing." And then Chante, I think, said that she feels a similar way. And so my question for both of you, I think is like, what is the feeling that you feel that is how you know that you're doing what you're meant to be doing? I don't feel that way. And I would love to know, like, what kind of feeling I'm looking for, if that makes sense.

RUBEN: I have this poster on my wall that says, "And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it." It's by Dr. Martin Luther King. And I know that's not an answer to your question, but it is a reminder to myself all of that aha moment. And it kind of goes back to your original question about what my superpower is. If I tell you my bio, like you asked me before, it sounds like it makes sense, but it really didn't make sense when I was going through it. I've been laid off three different times. I had a 2.9 GPA. I was not a good student and a bunch of other, like not so pretty things that happened to me in my life. But if you look at the theme across every other thing that I've been through, because I didn't live a hard life, I didn't grow up in a hurt and I didn't grow up extra privileged. I lived a comfortable middle class life. But when I think about the theme across the different things that I've been through in my life, there's a consistent pattern of me being able to always connect with the people that I've got to connect to. So networking has never been hard. If I wanted to get a certain job, it didn't matter. I could figure it out. If I was trapped in a city, I'd be able to figure it out. And I can make friends very quickly and I can make them feel like we've known each other for a very long time. And just like I broke into tech, I also broke into investment banking from a small school that nobody has ever heard of. And the dynamics of breaking into finance are based so much in the dynamics of breaking into tech. And I've done that multiple, multiple, multiple times.

So if I were you, I will reflect on what are the things that you have done consistently in your professional life that you may not be doing at your current job, but you feel is like who you are and what makes you different. And it might be something that you think is weird. A lot of times the things that you think are weird are your superpowers and are what sets you apart and that are what you are meant to do. And so, pay attention to the pattern. And once you do discover what your life is meant to be about and what your purpose is and you start moving forward, start looking for signs and start trusting the timing. I know it sounds kind of weird and super high level and super spiritual, but it's pretty interesting because once you step out on faith and in the direction that you've focused on directionally based off the patterns in your life, signs will appear to let you know you're going in the right direction, whether you've failed at it or not. Like if I got rejected, I know that if I keep going in a certain direction, that's where I'm supposed to go and that's what I need to do. And I wasn't put in a position for no reason. If I'm not doing my best in that direction and it's not working out, then that's on me. But if I'm doing my best and I'm going in the direction based off the pattern that I've seen, and I'm paying attention to the signs, then I just got to trust what I personally call God's compass.

CHANTE: Yeah, that's a great answer. I'm not sure if I can necessarily go second, but I'll try to kind of give you the answer that I always tell people, which is there is this feeling inside of me literally in my stomach that I get. It's like an exciting feeling about waking up every morning, and I don't want to go to sleep. Like I love doing what I'm doing. And similarly to what Ruben is doing with folks and working with underestimated people, I'm doing the same thing with The Darkest Horse. I focus on basically the same exact people. And I'm trying to make sure that I have as many examples, like with Ruben, for example, to say, "Here's a community that you can plug into one little facet of technology." So I just feel because I'm representing people who are like me who definitely was not born with privilege necessarily. I was born with some privilege, don't get me wrong. But I was definitely underestimated, as Ruben has mentioned earlier, and lots of sort of similarities in there in terms of also having near-death experiences. If somebody would look at my background, they would say, "There is no way in hell you're supposed to be here. Just given all the statistics that we know, there's just no way you're supposed to be in here." And so with that, I sort of get fired up in knowing that, like, I'm not supposed to be in a room and then I'm there and I get so excited that I can't stand it. And I also want to tell everyone, I almost feel like it's a crush, like a feeling I have when I really like somebody or I'm into something. I wake up everyday with this rush of energy inside of me that I cannot ignore. When maybe that goes away, I can possibly move on to the next thing, but I don't know that this will ever go away.

JAMEY: I want to thank both of you. Because those answers are really beautiful and there was a lot to reflect on in them for me and I'm sure for a lot of our listeners. I really appreciate it, honestly.

CHANTE: Thank you for asking a good question. So, Ruben, one of the things I saw online recently was an awesome guy that you all made, you all make great content. But it was this week specifically around Corona virus. Do you feel like you're getting any more interest in terms of people coming in saying, "Well, I might be working from home, maybe I can start coding or learn to do this right now while my company is allowing me to?"

RUBEN: That's interesting. So you saw an article focus on working from home in a remote working guide, so if you want to learn more about working from home, for listeners on this podcast, I would definitely link to the remote working guide. We also dropped a report called the State of the Bootcamp Market 2020 that I would also link to, so you can see the growth of online bootcamps. It's about 31% last year and has definitely increased more this year. But your question about Corona virus, so we're going to actually do more pieces about this coming up soon. So I'm not going to like mess that up. But from my perspective, I will say, Career Karma is blessed to be in a position where our team has been operating fully from day one and all over the programs that we work with in Career Karma all have the online option with full time and part time flexibility. And every single one of the programs that we we work with have the income sharing options. So nobody needs money to go to the program while they're learning. So the majority who had downloaded Career Karma and chose the online program with [inaudible] and we actually have not seen any pullback because of the demand for online bootcamps, which is great because now that people are working from home, people have more time to focus on something. We're also seeing more in-person schools across the nation, [inaudible] the fact that they're moving instruction online. And we feel that if this trend continues, it could accelerate in-person bootcamps moving online, which represent roughly 75% of the market. And if you want to see the top cities for bootcamps, you could actually look at the same bootcamp market report again for the locations of all these bootcamps. And we actually think that that shift to online is a big opportunity.

The other thing that you're seeing is increased public interest in remote work, which we believe will result in greater demand for digital skills because companies like Google and Apple and Slack and pretty much every company in America, now that we have this national state of emergency because there's [inaudible] event, companies are forced to figure out how to do remote work, just like over 70 universities are forced to teach classes online. And so, even though there's a lot of uncertainty about what the Corona virus and we do believe that it could lead to a recession in the United States, what is clear is that from our perspective, bootcamps, especially online, are the ones that have the online options are strongly correlated with online universities, which have historically performed very well to economic downturns because most of those go back to school to acquire new in-demand skills to enter the workforce. And [inaudible] we believe that one thing that's constant and that people will continue to need help making their most important career decisions and Career Karma will always be positioned so well to deliver on that. So that's our perspective on Corona.

CHANTE: Great answer. Lots of good stuff there. I just linked to those two, the Remote Working Tips Guide, and the State of the Bootcamp Market Report. Did you say anything else you'll also link to? 

RUBEN: Yeah. So the State of the Bootcamp Market Report, the Remote Working Guide is a good one to link to. I think it will be good to also look at this, the Income Share Agreements Market Report so you could understand that model. There is a shift in our education system to [inaudible] education where people don't have to pay for something that hasn't been delivered. Historically, people pay tuition or take out a loan for a degree before they get a job, which puts a lot of people at a disadvantage and our education system is changing. There is actually a guide. You can link to it, called How to Pay for Coding Bootcamp. They could see seven different options to pay for a program. And that's super important because money is going to be an issue for people that are working from home and trying to find a new career. And it's important for them to know that they don't need money in order to go through one of these programs until they get a job. And when they do get a job, there'll be an accounting proposition to pay back the income shared limit.

CHANTE: Yes, I'm going to drop links to all that. Thank you so much, Ruben.

JAMEY: I've been thinking a lot also about, you mentioned more of a public interest in remote work because of what's happening with the state of emergency and such which I've also been thinking a lot about. But I wonder if you think that these groups have underestimated people that you work with, as you said earlier. Do you think there's a unique situation of people who will particularly benefit from remote work becoming more of a thing in the public consciousness or no?

RUBEN: I'll say people that work in retail jobs. I'll say mothers especially, I think. I think mothers especially are going to benefit from remote work because a lot of times when they're pregnant, they go on maternity leave. Sometimes that break in work leads to difficulties returning back into the workforce. So I think that's actually a very big group of people that's going to benefit from remote work. I think anyway, there was retail, whether it's a bank, whether it's a store. I think janitor job, construction jobs. I think a lot of those people are really going to take advantage of this type of work. Truck drivers, I think, are going to be able to take advantage of this type of work. But I think, I forget the exact number, there's over 250 million desk jobs that could be the remote work. And so, honestly, I think the silver lining on Corona virus is that this can accelerate the fact that the tech industry will no longer be a separate industry anymore. But everything and every industry will need to have tech at its core. So I think that every company has to figure out how to use technology now. And if they don't, they will die. So whoever's being employed by them will be able to work remotely. If you could prove you could do remote work right now, then you should be able to do it when there's no Corona virus.

JAMEY: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that that's really insightful.

CHANTE: Touche. Tech or die.

RUBEN: [Laughs] 

CHANTE: Now is a great time. It's a great time to have this site, to have lots of resources. You all have tons of content. I just searched on your website for income share information. It's like tons. So whoever's listening, please, please, please, please take your time as you're working from home these next few weeks to go and check out the website because it's really great.

RUBEN: I mean, I want to give a big, big shout out to my co-founder, Artur Meyster, for that. My co-founder, Artur Meyster is not just teaching now in JavaScript, but he's also in charge of our marketing team. And we have an editor in chief, Chad Crabtree, so big shout out to him. James Gallagher, who's our researcher, and every single person that's a writer on our team. We have a team of over ten writers that's pumping out tons of content. And I think we just hired two more. So, it's like a lot of people, too many to name right now. But everybody got [inaudible] they all get their credit because that's not me. That's them. I'm just a vessel.

CHANTE: Wow. 

JAMEY: You're doing your superpower right now.

CHANTE: Yeah. You're flexing the superpower. How many people work for Career Karma now?

RUBEN: Over 50.

CHANTE: Wow. And are you all dispersed throughout the country or most of you in San Francisco?

RUBEN: No, we're remote. We've got a team across the nation. But we also have a team in Europe, Spain, UK, Ukraine, Philippines, Cambodia, Brazil, Venezuela, Puerto Rico.

CHANTE: Ooh.

RUBEN: Yeah, we love them.

CHANTE: That's so great. And do you all know -- being that people are coming from different countries and cultures, how often do you all talk about as a team being that you have such a diverse representation there? How often do you talk about the impact of your work at Career Karma might have on their local community?

RUBEN: We talk about it often, but we try to let the work speak for itself. We don't want to be seen as people that take credit for transforming communities. We want the people from their communities to use Career Karma as a tool to transform their communities. So we want to be known as a tool, not as the hero. Because like I said, we're helping people discover themselves and help them take their cities back, or [inaudible] the gentrification, recognize that you actually can do this and you don't have to just watch it from afar or watch your people get evicted. You could actually just use this tool to take it back yourself.

CHANTE: That's really dope. I feel like that's what I think is kind of the cool thing about this is that you have different people who are helping you build this company, but then they have access to this great content that's going to empower so many other people across the country, across the globe to start using technology in ways they weren't able to. And what's that going to do for tech? It's going to be beautiful.

ARTEMIS: It can create this contagion, basically, of people believing in themselves. How powerful.

RUBEN: I like that word that you use to create this contagion. Career Karma is not just a company, it's a mindset, it's a movement, it's a belief. Obviously, we don't want to [inaudible] contagion like spreading across the world in a good way. Having a [inaudible] in a positive way, not a negative way is super important. And to recognize that like the highest level of achievement is serving others. Usually when you achieve a high level, you've got to figure out what to do with your achievement. Are you going to keep it for yourself? Are you going to give it away to somebody? Are you going to teach it to your family? Are you going to scale it and teach it to the world? If you look at Jedi knights, if you look at knights, if you look at samurais, if you look at anybody that's like revered and has a respect for others, but also is excellent at their craft, they're servants. And this got some weird, but the Jay Electronica album just dropped yesterday. One of the quotes that he had on the album that I like is, "If you want to be a master life, you must submit to a master." A master doesn't always have to be a higher power, like you can be in service of others. And I see myself as in service of others. Even though I'm the CEO of a company, the people guide me.

CHANTE: I think that's a great quote. So you said if you want to be a master, you have to submit to a master. Is that what you said? If you want to be a master, you have to submit to a master?

RUBEN: Yeah. If you want to be a master in life, you must submit to a master.

CHANTE: I would agree, absolutely. I mean, it's not weird to me to talk about spirituality. I'm a highly spiritual person. I think it's good. What I'm doing, I really believe that I'm living my dharma. Do you all in terms of like working [inaudible] on the team? Do your co-founders also have a strong spiritual core that's driving their actions and kind of the way that they're showing up at work?

RUBEN: Nope, that's interesting. My co-founders are Jewish, we have different spiritual beliefs. But that's what's beautiful, is that we can have different spiritual beliefs, but get along and still believe in a higher power together and be driven in similar directions. At the end of the day, the world is going to believe the different things that we believe and there's going to be gaps in what we know as humans that are filled by faith. I think that what's important to understand is that at the end of day, there's a common theme across the pool, which is love for others, ourselves. And that's why we do things for other people. There's no [inaudible] live life without having any love at all. I've known my co-founders for the last seven years. We haven't been apart from each other for more than 14 days. I love them. We are like brothers. And it is awesome to be here with them.

CHANTE: So special. Wow. You said that you've been together for the last seven years and you haven't been apart for more than 14 days. So in order to take Career Karma to the next level, what's on the horizon for you in the next seven years? 

RUBEN: I will say in the near future, we will continue matching career transitioners to job training programs, specifically bootcamps. What I will say in addition to creating this really strong discussion and content focus on becoming the number one destination for career advice for bootcamps and eventually the Internet, we're going to start showcasing the work of everybody coming to our bootcamp partners through portfolios. So they'll be able to showcase their portfolios and we'll be able to fast track their work directly to a network of thousands of recruiters to give them the opportunity to demonstrate that they have their skills. So that's going to be a very big, big deal because there are more people that are applying to these programs that are going for these technical skills. And once enough time has passed, we will have more career transitioners that have technical skills than the entire labor market coming out of universities and then we'll start getting into staffing.

CHANTE: Great. I mean, I'm in staffing [inaudible] but I think that I really believe that it's going to belong to the people soon. The way that we build technology and the way that people can get to relationships and networking is really going to be so organic. You might not need as many people in the middle to be the broker anymore. And so, I hope that that's part of that to kind of figure out how you might empower people to actually own it and go out and handle their own sort of, I guess, brokering the deal, because the less we have in between the opportunity and the person, the more money's on the table for them.

RUBEN: Yeah, for sure.

CHANTE: Yeah. Arty and Jamey, do you have any other questions you want to ask Ruben?

ARTEMIS: I have one question. You brought up your dad and him learning all these languages and getting involved in different cultures, and mentioned that having a big impact on you today. I was wondering if you could tie some of those things together. I was thinking back to an interview we had with Halleemah Nash who talked about cultural fluency as her special power. And so I've been thinking a lot about what that means and the way of seeing that comes from that kind of embedding yourself in other cultures and other languages. And I'm I'm wondering how those experiences affected your trajectory with Career Karma.

RUBEN: I think being a black tell us like, it teaches you how to adapt and interact in any environment, to start. Not only have I played at the highest levels in Carnegie Hall and galas and places internationally and everywhere else. But I've also played in the studio with [Gucci Mane] and [inaudible], and Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child. I understand the importance of cultural fluency. To your point, I do believe that there is a lot of [inaudible]. It is super important to be able to adapt and interact in any environment. I also think that in this day and age, people in Career Karma are mastering and understanding the importance of learning and re-learning and recognizing that this is going to be a lifelong journey and not just going to pick one job and stay in it forever. You're going to go from company to company to company and school to school to school. And because that's the case, you're going to interact with different people.

Going back to what we said before about race. I think like before, it was easier to be racially prejudiced. But I think in the future, everybody is going to be mixed race. So you really got to understand how to interact with other people without judgment. I think we should have respect for each other and never assume that you can't learn or grow from anybody, even if they are someone that's immature or being rude. You can always learn from other people. You can always grow from other people. So I think cultural fluency is super viable and I like that word. I'm going to start using that word. 

CHANTE: Ruben, this is Chante again. In terms of the cultural fluency in learning, what do you think has been the biggest lesson that you've learned thus far?

RUBEN: Well, another thing I'll mention is that my first language is Spanish. So when I went to kindergarten, I couldn't speak English. [Inaudible] but I'm a black Spanish [inaudible]. 

CHANTE: I think I did know that [inaudible] that was cool. I am Mexican. Spanish was one of the first languages spoken in my household, too. 

RUBEN: And what's interesting is that nobody learns a language through a book growing up. They're just immersed in the environment and they learn the language, whether it's Japanese, whether it's Chinese. Any language that you think is hard to learn, like children rise to the occasion. And then once you learn English, you take English class and then get confused. And so I think about bootcamps and immersion and even the acquisition of skills as a musician [inaudible]. The fastest way to learn the language is to move to that country. And we talk about this in the curriculum all the time. You want to learn French, move to France. You'll learn it really fast. And so, as you all are going through this process, I think it's important to understand that the fastest way to learn it is just to put yourself into it. And then for me, I've always been -- because I grew up speaking Spanish and I am black, the black people didn't always see me as black because of this. But at the same time, Dominicans and Cubans are just like black people that were on a slave boat that got dropped on the island and learned Spanish. Like I said before, it's a big melting pot. That's what makes America beautiful. A lot of this racial tension that we get is a lot, but I think that if we can just understand that we can grow from each other and learn from each other's cultures, I think a lot of things can change. And a lot of cultures internationally are family-oriented, and it goes back to the things that I said before about fundamentals in life, which is love, family, friends, time, higher power purpose. That's what we're trying to help people get to. Most people aren't doing what they love in the world, so we're trying to help people get back to that.