Company visit at Joonko

By: Yuval Rak and Michael Gilat

The company visit today at Joonko was great. Ilit Raz founder and CEO told us her own story of managing the start-up as a CEO and as an entrepreneur.

Joonko connects high-quality, underrepresented talent, with world-class companies that care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. These candidates include women, people of color, and service veterans. These are, as Ilit described, silver-medalist candidates who are verified and interviewed by Joonko’s partner companies.

Ilit shared with us, 1st year Entrepreneurship students, about the challenges, the hard times, and the decision-making she was going through. From the ideation of the company, the founders, pivots of the startup and constant changes of the platform, recruitment of employees, and fundraising up until today.

We also learned important tips from her mistakes and successes.

• Concentrate on recruiting customers before recruiting investors. It is easier to fundraise money from investors once they see actual results.
• To ensure financial stability, it is best to take a yearly subscription, rather than a monthly subscription.
• Before recruiting any marketing and sales managers, her suggestion is to go to the potential customers yourself in order to pitch and fully understand their needs and how your idea fits these needs.
• Always try to maintain a work-life balance.
• Along with many responsibilities and challenges along the way, there is great satisfaction and a sense of success that accompanies her actions.
  
  
  I want to thank Ilit for taking the time to have personal discussions with us after the visit. Ilit answered personally to every one of us with patience and professionalism.
  Thank you!