So it’s with deep professional and personal sadness that I must announce my plans to shut down 70 Million Resources, Inc., the parent company of 70 Million Jobs (the 1st national, for-profit employment platform for people with criminal records) and Commissary Club (the first mobile social network for this population).
When I launched 70MR in 2016, I was motivated to build a company that could short circuit the pernicious cycles of recidivism in this country--cycles that destroy lives, tear apart families and decimate communities. I sought to disrupt the sleepy reentry industry by applying technology, focusing on data, employing an aggressive, accountable team, and moving with some urgency. And for the first time, approaching the challenge as a national, for-profit venture.
This approach, which I named “RaaS,” (Reentry as a Service), turned out to be wildly effective, and by the beginning of 2020, we were delivering on our mission of driving “double bottom line returns”: build a big, successful business and do massive social good. With the help of Y Combinator and nearly 1,500 investors, I assembled a team and got to work.
We succeeded in facilitating employment for thousands of deserving men and women and became operationally profitable.
However, the pandemic had other plans for us. When it hit in force in March 2020, companies made wholesale terminations of nearly all our people, and continued their halt in hiring for two years.
Our revenue dropped like a rock to almost nothing. I immediately responded by paring our expenses to the bone and began letting team members go. There was no opportunity to raise additional funding, so I began injecting my own money into the company—money I barely have—just to keep the lights on.
When the economy and job market began storming back, we were inundated with inbound requests for our services. Our perseverance seemed to be paying off. Except now we were hit with a new gut punch: “The Great Resignation.” Now our workers were reticent to come back to work. And if they did accept a job, they’d often leave after only a few days.
It became obvious that we lacked the resources to weather this new storm while hoping and praying the world would normalize soon. (It still hasn’t.)
Our coffers are empty. We’ve incurred a relatively small amount of debt (that I personally guaranteed) that I hope to negotiate down. All employees have been paid what they were owed (except for me). I will explore sale of assets we hold.
On a personal note, I can’t tell you how grateful and humbled I’ve been that many would entrust their investment or business with me. For a person who’s done time in prison (me), it’s almost impossible to ask for someone’s trust. I have not yet forgiven myself for things I did which ultimately got me into trouble. But I will be eternally grateful to those that assisted me in my efforts to settle the score and win back my karma.
From the beginning I was blessed by an unbelievable team of smart, funny, passionate young people who shared my ambition to cause change. They stuck with me/us until the very end.
I’m most saddened by the millions of formerly incarcerated men and women who we won’t be able to help. These are some of the most sincere, honest, and heroic people I’ve ever met. It was my life’s honor to work with them.
I’m pretty sure I’ll continue my reentry work. Several prominent organizations have indicated their interests in me assuming a leadership role. I need to work, and I need to continue my work.
I’m so sorry for this outcome, despite the good we’ve done. I’m not sure we could have done anything differently or better, but ultimately, I take full responsibility. Needless to say, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out, here or at Richard@70MillionJobs.com.
This has been the greatest experience of my life; it couldn’t have happened without my getting a second chance.
Richard
Take the job so you dont starve, and so you can begin to rebuild. It's not time to shut the doors, it's just time to take a knee and get your game plan together. It ain't over yet, it's just halftime.
This will help: https://marker.medium.com/reflecting-on-my-failure-to-build-...
On a recidivism-related tangent, a close friend of mine runs a nonprofit called "Guitars Behind Bars" -- https://guitarsbehindbars.com -- which does like it says on the tin, providing instruments and a musical outlet to convicts. It's had profound positive effects on the inmates who've participated (and their jailers/wardens, too). Bringing it up here bc stories about helping ex-convicts don't often feature on the HN front page.
Power to you, Richard. Keep fighting the good fight, and thank you for being a light for others.
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
Only a little over 1/3rd are actually in prison for violent crime.
"It’s not a labor shortage — it’s a wage and workers rights shortage" https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/570441-its-not-a-labor-s...
"Our employment system has failed low-wage workers. How can we rebuild?" https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/04/28/our-emplo...
Turns out, for instance, Halcyon Molecular was similar, it went bust losing tons of money but it let me get a decent wage after all the employment discrimination I suffered for standing up to torture (false imprisonment, so very similar, had a gap in my resume I couldn't explain because I didn't realize there was an April in 2009, it just hurt to think about that moment in my life). That $20-an-hour job allowed me to create abnormal speedups for many algorithms, leading to https://fgemm.com, which I'm working on now.
It was my second chance. And it created the tech it was meant to, just not the way the investors expected.
EDIT: can't reply to selimthegrim except here, at the limit of posts. I will get it working. I know it's not up yet, it's coming soon. Currently ironing out the algorithms instead.
But if the applicant pool is bad with the majority quitting then I could see employers leaving the platform.
My company operates/ed a job board and a staffing business. Both ran like traditional job boards (Indeed, Zip Recruiter, etc) and staffing companies (Kelly, Adecco, etc.), except being focused entirely on the formerly incarcerated. This is how large employers source many, many employees.
The staffing business was much larger. In this model, we serve as the hirer-of-record, and essentially lease out the workers to our client employers, who cover all our costs (wages, unemployment insurance, taxes, etc.) plus our mark-up (profit). It's a high volume, low margin business.
During the Great Resignation, we found it took 10x the time and effort to get someone placed, eroding our already thin margins. Plus, if a worker left (which they began doing at a great rate), we're obligated to replace them. All of this made it pretty much impossible for us to make money. (Again, we're a for-profit business). I hope this clarifies things.
Here's a breakdown by most serious offense for my state's prison system:
https://www.doc.sc.gov/research/InmatePopulationStats/ASOF-M...
Which has 16% drugs, but also:
26% homicide, 12% Robbery, 11% Burglary, 9.5% Rape/Sexual assault, 6.6% Kidnapping, 6.4% Assault.
I wrote an blog post a while back about how prison populations skew so much towards the most violent crimes.
But I think ultimately you’d be building a trailer park for the more troubled parts of society and that might cause it to be less idyllic than you envisage.
I’ve previously done some marketing work for an apartment building that focuses on mixing previously homeless in with other tenants plus support services on site.
Where do you think they went? If they mostly went to work elsewhere because as part of the "Great Resignation" because they found better opportunities, then perhaps you accomplished your social mission (which was presumably giving them a foot in the door of gainful work), even if it was at the price of the business.
Maybe structural impediments to employment for felons came down due to a tightening labor market?
For example, in CA, laws are being passed to allow formerly incarcerated wildlands firefighters to work in that job after release:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
If they resigned instead due to hopelessness and falling back through the proverbial cracks of society, that's a terrible result.
Im a formerly incarcerated software engineer. I now run a non-profit org called Underdog Devs dedicated to getting formerly incarcerated people into software engineering jobs.
We have over 450 members. We experienced engineers from all over the industry that will guide you. We also have a program called Project Underdog where we offer a stipend to pay their bills and have them pair program all week long with various mentors. Its led by the brilliant Jessica McKellar and has proven to be better than any bootcamp or CS program ive experienced.
Reach out if you would like some support.
and on Twitter @UnderdogDevs
and on Twitter @UnderdogDevs
if you had some free time to volunteer and wanted a mission reach out here....
and on Twitter @UnderdogDevs
If you click the ‘wage level’ button you can see that workers everywhere are seeing growth but workers in the lowest quartile are seeing higher growth.
A few explanations other than the one you don’t see evidence for:
- the growth is in nominal dollars, inflation explains the spike and everyone is down in real terms, so even though the lowest-paid are doing better, they still aren’t seeing wage growth (but you are also observing nominal pay with your open eyes…)
- the lowest-paid are quitting, or the number of workers is decreasing in the higher quartile such that the average individual chosen from the first quartile would not have seen wage growth but rather higher-paid people are now counting as part of their quartile and pushing up the averages
Can you point me to your source(s) indicating the lower number you’re referring to?
And if someone was desperate enough to try to hide a US criminal record, Canada is the last country they should try, because Canada and the US share their criminal history databases.
1: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
The page is pretty plain language reading which makes it appear very trustworthy.
However, they avoid explicitly saying that past crimes - whether convicted and served or not - don't matter. The DO say that catching the eye of Interpol is bad.
I do know that there's a chap from Florida that has done something similar. I can't remember exactly what his HN handle was, but we had a rather prickly exchange, some time back.
If you are interested in providing services like this in the future, he might not be a bad person to team up with.
I wish you (and he) the very best of luck, in your future endeavors. I'm pretty big on that ol' "second chance" thing.
[EDITED TO ADD] This article is interesting. What makes it even more interesting, is the author of the article (It's NYT, so there may be a paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/opinion/clean-slate-incar...
[EDITED TO ADD (2)] The person I mentioned is one of your replies. He runs Underdog Devs: https://www.underdogdevs.org/
Of course, there are a lot of things going on. However, I think one important thing is that American workplaces, over the last twenty or more years, gradually accumulated immensely toxic/abusive cultures. At the point of the pandemic, when many people had unemployment/work-at-home/savings, a lot of workers' had their tolerance of that interrupted and then just refused to return.
The thing with the situation is toxic work environments basically are going to double down on their claims, their view of what a sane environment and reasonable pay are. So these organizations are eating through employees and so they'd be the worst customers of a job board. The question how much 70m Record vetted their customers.
Article explaining the toxic angle: https://www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/how-toxic-co...
Employees discuss their views: https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/
> When the economy and job market began storming back, we were inundated with inbound requests for our services. Our perseverance seemed to be paying off. Except now we were hit with a new gut punch: “The Great Resignation.” Now our workers were reticent to come back to work. And if they did accept a job, they’d often leave after only a few days.
I couldn't understand how "The Great Resignation" made the situation more difficult for 70MJ. I've read the follow up comment[GrRegCm] and it didn't make things any clearer:
> During the Great Resignation, we found it took 10x the time and effort to get someone placed, eroding our already thin margins. Plus, if a worker left (which they began doing at a great rate), we're obligated to replace them. All of this made it pretty much impossible for us to make money. (Again, we're a for-profit business). I hope this clarifies things.
It doesn't.
There's a _sort of_ incoherency and inconsistency here.
On the one hand the "formerly incarcerated" have a hard time (re)-integrating into society. Among other difficulties they struggle harder than others, ceteris paribus, finding a job.
In turn this has, supposedly, certain negative effects like "the pernicious cycles of recidivism in this country--cycles that destroy lives, tear apart families and decimate communities"
That's both the societal issue you set out to improve and what made the for-profit venture viable.
But on the other hand the same "formerly incarcerated" can allow themselves to "often leave after only a few days", "which they began doing at a great rate". I guess the welfare system in the US is quite extensive if people - and not just any people but ex-cons - can allow themselves to quit jobs after a few days with nothing else in the horizon.
I'll qualify all of that and note that, as I wrote above, it's only _sort of_ inconsistent. It's possible that they don't have good alternatives, but they see everyone else quitting, including spoiled and overindulged by 2021 tech sector employees, and think their circumstances apply. Or they don't think but just do what everyone else.
It's also possible that I'm still missing here something and my whole analysis is wrong because of that.
But it's also possible that "The Great Resignation" isn't the reason for the company's failing.
I'm not convinced. If I did miss something I'd be happy to hear.
I could help facilitate an introduction if helpful.
I got a 'free' ticket from Seattle to Alaska once by working on a boat :)
>FWIW a friend of a friend did this, and indeed was killed rather soon.
Sorry to hear that. I was in YPG for a few months in 2015. You're right it is dangerous, especially for those who are especially brave or end up in a unit that really embraces 'sehid' (martyr) culture. Rojava also offers some civil volunteer opportunities. Generally if you act like a criminal / psycho / weirdo you get filtered out before you can do much damage. There's no paperwork but I think parts of the middle east operate by the old code of a man being judged by his actions rather than formal paperwork from the state.
I have no personal experience with FFL. I know it's much more selective than YPG. The upside is you get French Citizenship. Therefore there is healthy competition with people from the 3rd world seeking a relatively high wage and EU citizenship.
Ic.org is a good place to visit to see what exists and you could emulate, it was started from a community called Twin Oaks that has quite a radical approach :-) I learnt about it from a book called "Is it Utopia yet" picked up in of all places Nuremberg... honestly agricultural land is cheap (2k a hectare) in non productive places and vegetable gardening or just plain planting stuff for lols like from "plants from a future" (pfaf.org) interspersed with a couple of weed plants should cover expenses... strawbale housing, adobe or trailer parks are much cheaper options at least initially... Gas made from compost, shit or wood chippings is a great alternative... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compost_heater
Then summing the 18-65 buckets (working age).