Running Circles Around The Status Quo: Cirkled In Matches Students To Opportunities

What was your first job?

Did you earn your spending money flipping burgers at a fast-food joint? Maybe you went to work hoping for a quiet day at the pool so you could get your homework done rather than lifeguarding. Or maybe you worked as a cashier at a local garden store and stood waving on the highway dressed as Santa when the regular Santa couldn’t make it.

(Oh. Maybe that was just me!)

Around thirty percent of teens held jobs in 2020, and 28.5 percent of high school students volunteer their time. Of the over seventeen million high school students in the U.S. in 2021, over 66 percent enrolled in college immediately following graduation and just under sixteen percent of high school graduates enrolled in a vocational or trade school.

Despite the varied ways for teens to spend their time, pursue their passion, and plan their future, there has been no common link to help them gather and present their experience, identify and research opportunities, and apply for the best fit. The market for teens to find work, volunteer, and determine what to do after high school graduation has largely relied on guidance counselors, adult role models, and word of mouth, making it ineffective, frustrating, and inequitable.

Software engineer, founder, and mother Reetu Gupta viewed this inefficiency as an opportunity ripe for disruption while helping her daughter apply to schools. In 2015, this Forbes Next 1000 entrepreneur founded Cirkled In as a platform for students to showcase themselves and their accomplishments through an electronic profile in a secure, centralized, mobile-friendly online platform. Cirkled In helps to match students with the colleges, trade schools, employers, and youth organizations that are the best fit for them.

Gupta explains that beyond streamlining the matchmaking process, “Cirkled In is focused on our social mission. Our college customers have reported seventy to eighty percent unique candidates – students not found on typical test websites like the College Board, ACT, or college search websites. We are helping colleges find hidden talent, students who would otherwise fall through the cracks. Cirkled In brings these students to light and puts them in front of colleges and employers.”

Gupta shares her journey from a small village in India to implementing her vision to “not only disrupt the 100-year-old education industry but also make a dent in the universe.”

Cirkled In has been described as “LinkedIn for high school students and colleges.” What need does a platform like Cirkled In fill? What competitors do you have?

Reetu Gupta: Cirkled In is a young professionals’ platform, empowering Gen-Z students to showcase their professional identity and providing a hub of opportunities. It connects students with best-fit educational and employment opportunities like colleges, employers, trade schools, and service providers, creating a win-win. LinkedIn is meant for adult professional profiles, not for students’ activities like academics, sports, music, and internships. And it’s not engaging for the media-loving, short attention span Gen-Z generation.

Today’s youth are different in many ways from my generation. They are not only digitally native but are also a lot more active with overlapping education and employment. Over fifty percent of youth today work nineteen hours a week.

I felt that we were stuck in the nineteenth century. There was nothing for students to find all the opportunities in one place and showcase themselves for all applications. As a student, you can create a record in Google Drive or SharePoint but can’t submit that with an application. To find opportunities, there are college search and some scholarship databases, but no solution for them to find part-time jobs, internships, and volunteer roles.

That's exactly what Cirkled In is doing. We give Gen-Z youth one platform to not only showcase themselves holistically beyond academics but also give them a hub of opportunities including colleges and trade schools along with part-time jobs and internships.

We’ve created a platform for them to shine a light on themselves as a professional – think LinkedIn marrying Tik-Tok and Instagram – to overlap what’s working in social media and overlay that with their professional pathways and growth.

You founded Cirkled In almost five years ago. How did you start, and what funding have you received?

Gupta: We initially bootstrapped the organization with no outside funding because before taking anyone else’s money, I needed to make sure I had my own conviction of the idea. I needed to make sure that someone other than myself would appreciate the product and use it. In 2018, we launched with the help of pre-seed angel funding from investors in the Seattle area. The launch took off and exceeded all goals. Our initial investors were impressed and came in with more investment. We are still funded by angel investors, along with grant money from State of Washington Department of Commerce. We are taking some investments from strategic investors through a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) and will raise our first venture capital round in 2023.

You arrived in the United States from your small, rural village in India with two suitcases and $2000 in savings. How has your upbringing and subsequent immigration influenced your founding of Cirkled In?

Gupta: I believe the seed for Cirkled In was planted when I was ten years old. My mom is a teacher and she had to quit her job once she had my sisters and me. But she is a very strong, career-oriented, ambitious woman who started an elementary school in our home and dragged us into running that. Admittedly, I hated it as a teenager but through that, the value of education went deep into my DNA. I grew up with Nelson Mandela’s quote, “education is the most powerful weapon to change the world.” I believed that to do something meaningful with my life, I had to go to college. So, I earned my bachelor’s and master’s in engineering and later immigrated to the U.S.

I believe the U.S. truly became the land of opportunity for me. I had many “once in a lifetime” opportunities of working in startups and Fortune 50 companies. I broadened my horizons to new possibilities that wouldn’t have been possible in the tiny town where I come from. Not only that, but raising my own kids now in the U.S. I got to experience a whole new education system and identify opportunities.

I am lucky to have gotten the best of two worlds and cultures. First, being raised by a teacher mom who is a strong woman leader gave me a strong foundation of education and its power, and then growing up again in America a second time through my kids.

Cirkled In is not your first startup. What career path led to the founding of Cirkled In?

Gupta: I started my career writing software in the telecom sector. People who remember the dial tone you hear on a landline don’t even think about it. I know how much code was written to make it possible to hear a dial tone when you pick up the phone. When something you’ve created becomes so reliable and expected to work all the time, that means you have done your job. The role of technology is to make things so easy that people don’t even think about it. The dial tone on your landline is one such example.

I started my career with AT&T Wireless and absolutely loved being a small part of the team taking it to initial public offering. That was a real thrill! After that, I worked in the aerospace industry to provide texting services for pilots and controllers. And I was super proud of how we innovated to disrupt that antiquated industry.

I completed my Master of Business Administration and moved to the business side. In my last role, I managed a $500 million revenue product line.

All this time, though, I kept thinking of making a bigger difference in the world. I did two startup hustles on the side. They didn’t go anywhere but taught me valuable lessons. Then when the idea for Cirkled In came to me, I knew this was a billion-dollar idea, worth quitting my job and doing full-time. And Cirkled In was born.

So equipped with my over dozen years of corporate experience in both engineering and business, two side gigs and lessons learned from them, and seeing the opportunities every day to innovate the education system as a parent, I embarked upon this journey and I’m thrilled beyond words every day to get to work on it.

How did you attract high profile advisors and investors like former Starbucks President Howard Behar to Cirkled In? What advice do you have for aspiring founders?

Gupta: I strongly believe that people gravitate to passionate people. People want to be associated with change-makers, risk-takers, and “don’t-take-no-for-an-answer” people.

Before I could convince anyone else, I had to convince myself. I knew that I was so passionate and driven about Cirkled In that I couldn’t not do it. I knew that I would feel suffocated without Cirkled In. I knew that I had what it takes to make it happen.

And then it’s a matter of just being me with people. I always look for alignment of mission and goals. Every partnership must be a win-win. Like we tell high school students who join our platform, there is no “best investor” or “best customer” or “best employee.” It’s always “best-fit investor,” “best-fit customer,” and “best-fit employee.”

Always look for people who are best-fit, not just best.

What is Cirkled In’s business model?

Gupta: Cirkled In is intended to be a kindergarten through college platform, though we are starting with high schools. We are attracting students at the beginning of their high school career – a fascinating stage of their life where education and employment start overlapping. With Cirkled In, we are putting students at the center of the circle and bringing the whole ecosystem together.

Even before the covid pandemic, it is estimated that U.S. colleges were spending between two billion and ten billion dollars per year on marketing and advertising, much of it on blind, mass, antiquated marketing in trying to recruit their freshman class with limited return on investment. On the other side, with over fifty-five percent of recent college graduates leaving their job within a year, and an average cost per hire of over six thousand dollars, employers end up wasting lot of money. It’s a losing proposition for both students and organizations.

Cirkled In empowers youth to showcase themselves through a modern, social-media style, student-centric professional profile, putting them at the center of whole ecosystem’s circle and connecting them to educational and employment opportunities. Cirkled In uses these data-rich profiles to enable organizations like colleges, employers and service providers to market to and recruit the best-fit candidates, reducing their cost and improving outcome.

We have seen amazing growth and garnered national awards, including two People’s Choice and “Top 10 Companies in the U.S.” by American Business Awards. We have been featured in major regional and national media as well.

What’s next for Cirkled In?

Gupta: We are at an inflection point right now. We have cracked the nut to acquire and engage Gen-Z students’ attention. So far, we have signed on over 750,000 students organically without any advertising spend. Students are spending three times more time on Cirkled In than other job and education websites, according to Google Analytics.

We have proven a solid return on investment with our initial college customers, reducing their cost of recruitment significantly. And we are now ready to take Cirkled In to the next level with more colleges, employers and service providers.

Covid propelled the higher ed industry into the twenty-first century for tech innovation. With standardized tests like the SAT and ACT becoming optional, colleges need a 360-degree holistic review of candidates and Cirkled In is emerging as a leader and go-to platform. Cirkled In enables colleges to not only recruit the best-fit candidates but also provide an application platform that makes it easier for the best-fit student population to showcase their skills, another win-win.

We are launching our jobs and internship portal for employers and a marketplace for various service providers to connect with students. With that we are also launching our student subscription model, empowering students to tap into additional services they desire. Cirkled in is making the education industry more effective, efficient, and equitable.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Follow me on LinkedIn or check out my other columns here.