While many startups try to solve internal problems for businesses, New York City-based startup Bandana has a different goal: It wants to help low-wage workers find better jobs with higher wages and better benefits, closer to home, while cutting down on commute time.
Today the company announced an $8.5 million investment, bringing its total funding to $12.3 million.
When I spoke to CEO and co-founder Timothy Makalinao when the startup announced its seed funding last year, he described his company as follows:
“Essentially what we're trying to do is create a platform that will empower working class Americans by making it easier for them to find better jobs and live better lives in the long run.”
It takes the form of a website that not only lists job listings but also has a map showing jobs by location so people don't have to commute far to get to work. Every job has a detailed description, salary range, estimated take home pay after tax, list of benefits and its location on the map.
The Bandana.com website has job listings and a map to help you find jobs by location. Image courtesy of Bandana
But despite its altruistic mission, it's still a business, and therefore has performance goals like any startup. “The biggest thing that's happened since we last spoke is that we launched Bandana.com and it's actually been a huge success,” Makalinao told TechCrunch.
The site lists between 18,000 and 25,000 jobs every day. Since launch, more than 150,000 New York City job seekers have visited the site directly, and the company has achieved this with little to no advertising spend. “Of the 150,000 job seekers, more than 130,000 came to our platform organically,” he says. So far, he estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 people have found jobs through the site.
They accomplished all of this through savvy content marketing, leveraging both TikTok and Instagram to drive traffic to their website. [specific] “Not only will they find a job, but they'll also get to know and be introduced to some really great companies around New York City,” he said.
For example, they created a video about the career trajectory of a Costco cashier, which Macalinao said has garnered more than 12 million views on TikTok. Another video featured a Harlem restaurant serving Puerto Rican food, which has garnered more than 150,000 views and generated a lot of engagement, driving traffic to the featured business.
Not only did the social media campaign drive traffic to Bandana and put the spotlight on New York businesses, it also allowed the company to acquire job seekers for just 1.5 cents per user — an incredibly low acquisition cost that caught the attention of investors.
This month, the company plans to expand beyond New York City to a broader geography that includes New Jersey residents commuting to Manhattan, Long Island and the Bronx north toward Scarsdale, and also plans to begin advertising similar jobs in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area by the first quarter of 2025.
Additionally, they are looking to expand beyond social media campaigns into more traditional forms of advertising, like subways, bus stops and billboards, and the new funding should help fund these efforts and raise awareness about the bandanas.
Until now, the company has focused primarily on attracting workers to the site rather than monetizing it, but it recently added sponsored posts as an initial revenue stream.
Future plans for the site also include introducing a generative AI search tool that will help job seekers find jobs simply by describing their desired role, and eventually expanding into training, certification and financial literacy.
The new investment was led by General Catalyst, with participation from previous investors Craft Ventures and Triple Impact Capital.