The following interview is a conversation we had with Kelsey Bishop, Founder and CEO of Candor, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Professional Relationship-Building

Kelsey Bishop
Thanks for having me. 

Brett
No problem. So let’s just kick off with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background. 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah. So I started Candor about two years ago. Before Candor, I was working at a lot of different startups, and I found that my experience was kind of put into two buckets. One bucket was, I joined companies that I absolutely loved. I could be working 14 hours days. Company could not have product market fit, but it didn’t matter because I loved the culture, loved my teammates. I loved showing up at work every day, and it was just fun. Some of the highlights of my career. And then I joined other teams where that wasn’t the case and didn’t quite have that culture fit. And those were some of the low points in my career. 

Kelsey Bishop
And so when I left my last job, started thinking about, how do we get to know each other as humans at work, and how do we do that in a remote world? And found that there was kind of this big gap between what we could learn about someone on LinkedIn and what we actually needed to know about them to have a true, deep relationship with somebody. So started Candor to help people kind of bridge that gap and really get to know each other on a more personal level at work. 

Brett
Amazing. And before we dive into the company, let’s get to know you a bit better. So a few questions we’d like to ask to do. So, first one is, what Founder do you admire the most, and what do you admire about them? 

Kelsey Bishop
I would have to say one of my friends, Cody Candy, runs a company called Bounce, and they’re actually based here in Lisbon. He started it in San Francisco, and they’re a luggage storage company. So during COVID basically, the business went to almost zero, and he went into this cockroach mode and just powered through kind of a really difficult two years basically alone and came out on the other side, and we had a travel boom, so everybody was storing their luggage. And the business is doing phenomenally well. They raised a huge series a last year from Andreessen, and he hires the coolest team. But I think my favorite thing about his story is kind of that resilience during COVID and just pushing through and kind of doing the hard thing when most people might have shut down the business at that point. 

Brett
What did you call it? Cockroach mode. 

Kelsey Bishop
Cockroach mode, yeah, his words, not mine. 

Brett
Yeah, I love that. Now, what about books? And the way we like to frame this is we use what Ryan Holiday describes as a quake book. So he describes a quake book as a book that just rocks you to your core and really influences how you think about the world and how you approach life. Do any quake books come to mind for you? 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah. So I read the Alchemist about once a year, and I feel like I get something different from it every single time. And it’s not kind of like some literary phenomenon or anything difficult to understand. It’s probably written at a 6th grade level. But the whole premise of the book is really like, the universe is conspiring to help you achieve what you want to achieve, and you really just have to step outside your comfort zone and go get it. And I love that way of thinking. I think starting a business and kind of how I try to live my life aligns well with just, like, you have to put out in the world what you want to get back. So, yeah, definitely the alchemist. 

Brett
Yeah, I love that book, and I love the idea of just going back to books that you’ve really found valuable and just reading them over and over again. I have a number of books that I do that as well, and it’s funny. I’ll look through the highlights that I made, like, four years ago, and it’s completely different. What I would have thought would be interesting today or useful insight today. So it’s always fun to go back and see that kind of stuff. 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah, I love that. 

Brett
Now, let’s switch gears and let’s dive a little bit deeper into the company. So I know you were talking there a bit about the origin story and the problem that you’re trying to solve. So maybe a good way to frame this would be to, let’s just talk from either the business perspective or from the end user perspective of what I see when I go to the platform and when I’m actually using the platform. 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah. So today it’s mostly managers who run remote teams who want to get to know their direct reports better. Right? So you’ve hired someone new to your team. You have this person that you’ll never meet in person, and you don’t really know a lot about them other than you’ve had five Zoom interviews with them. But now you’re managing them, and that requires a lot of relationship building. So you sign up for a Candor profile to kind of get to know their feedback preferences, get to know what they do on the weekends, get to know a fun fact, and just really be able to relate to them in a way that you wouldn’t be able to without a Candor profile. 

Kelsey Bishop
So what we see today is those remote managers will sign up and kind of invite their teammates on to do the same, and they’ll kind of exchange Candor profiles. And now we’ve recently launched some team features where you can actually build and strengthen your culture directly on Candor. So we have some culture focused exercises, like, kudos. We are coming down the pipeline with one around feedback, but exercises that you can do together as a team to really get closer and strengthen that culture. 

Brett
And what’s a typical remote manager look like for you? Is this like a SaaS startup, or what’s that average profile for you? 

Kelsey Bishop
It’s funny, we don’t have any industry focus, so we do have kind of the SaaS. We have tech managers. We’ve got the classic series C startup manager who comes in and is managing a team of engineers. But we also have construction companies who come to us and they’re managing a team of architects, for example. So it really does run the gamut. We recently had a team of admissions people from a small university in the US sign up. So, yeah, no, kind of industry specific. It’s kind of just, you know, you’re at work, you want to get to know your teammates better. It doesn’t really matter if you’re working on, know, tech platform or a college admissions board. 

Brett
Then does it sit on top of slack? Or is its own independent site and own independent app? 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah, it’s its own independent site, and we plan to integrate with Slack in the near future. 

Brett
Okay, that makes sense. And what about traction? Are there any numbers or metrics that you can share? Our audience, as you can probably imagine, loves to hear numbers and any numbers that you’re okay with sharing would be awesome to hear. 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah, totally. So one thing that is exciting is we’ve recently reached a virality metric that is pretty cool. So our k factor, which is basically the average number of users a given user brings onto the platform. Right. So Facebook’s virality factor, I think the k factor was around eight. Flax is similar. We basically just reached this milestone, which is our k factor is above one, which means our product is inherently viral. So every single person who signs up is referring, on average, more than one person. So that’s super cool. On the growth side, the other thing I’ll mention is last week we actually saw 10% platform growth. And platform growth for us is a combination of user sign ups. And did those users make a really interesting profile and add a lot of content to it. 

Kelsey Bishop
So we’re starting to see this flywheel happen with the virality, with the increase in user sign ups. So it’s an exciting time for sure. 

Brett
And how’d you achieve that virality? I’m guessing that didn’t just happen on accident. I know that’s something that all founders dream of having with their products. So what do you think you got right to make that happen? 

Kelsey Bishop
I think it comes down to the intentionality of the product and the design. I think things that people share are products that they’re really proud to be associated with. And at Candor, I like to think that we’ve been a very product and design led company. We don’t really skimp on brand. We don’t skimp on illustrations within the product. We’re really intentional around fonts and spacing and design in general. And I think people can feel that when they sign up. Most people who I interview during user research are like, wow, this is a beautiful product. And I think when you have that level of just, like, excitement about the product, people are just more willing to. 

Brett
Share it, for sure. When I was going on the website yesterday to prepare for this interview, I was thinking that too, of the, wow, it’s a beautiful site, beautiful product, and the messaging is very crisp and very clear. Sometimes I go on a website and I walk away just wondering, like, what the hell does that company do? My brain hurts. But it was very clear. Was it always that clear? And have you always just been really good at messaging and copywriting, or where did that come from? And when in the journey did that come? 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah. So I got really lucky with teammates. We’ve been able to recruit onto our team at Candor. So one of my first hires ever was this incredibly talented designer, Felix. And Felix has done all of our product design, has just made it feel really crisp and intentional. And Felix actually has a bestie named Sam. And Sam was one of our quick follow on hires after that. And she’s running all of our brand and marketing and is actually an illustrator designer herself. So I think having really strong talent on the team that can really lean in, be intentional about this stuff, gets me out of the driver’s seat, thankfully, because this is not my strong suit. I would say I have a strength in being able to dumb things down. 

Kelsey Bishop
Someone once told me you have a way of making really complicated things sound really stupid. Yeah, okay, that’s the superpower. But, yeah, in terms of the brand and design, that’s all Sam and Felix. 

Brett
And what’s the go to market motion been then? Has it been PlG so far? 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah, surprisingly, we get most of our users from TikTok, so kind of going that consumer first angle, but, yeah, PlG. The users that aren’t coming straight top of funnel are coming through referrals. 

Brett
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Brett
Tell us about the TikTok strategy. 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah, I mean, TikTok is truly a remarkable product. I think their algorithm is one of the most fascinating in the social networks we currently have today, in that it just finds exactly who you’re talking to. So you can make content and without even trying to do the targeting well or come up with some creative, amazing copy, TikTok just finds exactly who your Persona is in a really interesting way. So even if your views on the videos are not in the millions, you’re still getting really quality traffic from TikTok, because they’re landing, at least in our case, they’re landing on the for you pages of all the remote managers in North America. So, yeah, it’s been an amazing channel for us. 

Brett
What type of content are you posting there, then? Is it, like, funny meme type content, or is it all related to team and culture building? What’s the general type of content strategy there? 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah, so it’s actually all funny work humor stuff. So we hired this incredibly talented content creator named Bacall, and she creates these hysterical videos, mostly based around trending sounds on TikTok, but all work humor, and we’ll do some, which is like a cringy manager type of skit. And I think it gets people thinking of like, oh, wow, I don’t want to be the cringey manager. What is this tool that helps me be a manager who’s more thoughtful and intentional and has good relationships with the direct reports? Like, I don’t want to do this manager mess up sort of thing. 

Brett
Got it. Makes sense. All right, I’ll move on from TikTok questions. I’m at risk here of sounding old, asking dumb questions about TikTok, so we’ll keep moving through. Outside of TikTok, what else is working from a growth perspective? 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah. So I think creating things that are truly useful. So we’ve iterated on the product so many different times now. If you look at our products from a year ago, we actually had a user who signed up a year ago. And then I just did a user research interview with her this month because she revisited the product and she was like, this is a completely different platform. So I think really listening to users, talking with them, my background, my first job ever was in user research. And so I think iterating the product based on what your users want, need, and is useful to them has been one of the biggest levers in our growth. And for reference, our k factor last year, like, that virality metric was around, like, 0.2. So weren’t seeing a ton of referrals. 

Kelsey Bishop
It was just slow on the referral side. And I think as we’ve iterated, as we’ve made the product tighter and the flow is better, we have five x that k factor in the last six months. 

Brett
And was that like, the North Star? Is that the obsession of the entire company to see that number go up? 

Kelsey Bishop
Referrals makes everything easier, right? It’s kind of our health metric, because if people are bringing on their teammates, almost everything else works, right? So that would be the signal to me that the product wasn’t working if we didn’t have referrals, if people weren’t bringing on their teammates, because the potential of our product in that case would be so limited. But now, if you’re there with all of your teammates, and then we’ve got culture tools for you, and then you’re building your culture on Candor, we have a long term vision of being a better professional network, right? So if we can actually strap our acquisition by being an amazing, useful team tool, that’s a really cheap way to get to social network level of users. So, yeah, I think that’s the big thing. 

Kelsey Bishop
That’s the big focus on referrals, is it just makes growth a lot easier. 

Brett
And when you say professional social network, then would that be like a LinkedIn rival? To an extent, yeah. 

Kelsey Bishop
A more authentic, more intentional LinkedIn. 

Brett
Less spam, hopefully. 

Kelsey Bishop
Yeah, less spam. We have an engineer on board who has sworn he will never build messaging because that does not want to. LinkedIn spam, everybody. 

Brett
No outsourced developers. 

Kelsey Bishop
Exactly. 

Brett
Now, in terms of go to market, is there a specific go to market challenge you’ve faced so far that you’ve overcome? And if so, what’s that challenge and how’d you overcome it? 

Kelsey Bishop
I have a challenge that we’re currently working through, and I wouldn’t say that we’ve overcome it yet, but we’re really focused on figuring out SEO. I think our product naturally has these really SEO friendly pages. Right. We’re making profile pages. And the cool thing about profile pages is people’s names. Long tail don’t have a ton of competition. They only have so many profiles and it’s not super competitive to be able to index for a name. But we basically have had trouble getting our domain authority high enough that all these profile pages are indexing in a meaningful way. So it’s one of those things where I feel like there’s a ton of potential there. And it’s been also like we’ve been still figuring out the product for so long. 

Kelsey Bishop
So SEO focus wasn’t top of mind, but now that the product is kind of working in a meaningful way, being able to drive more top of funnel through SEO could be super meaningful. So yeah, we’re looking at agencies right now. We’re trying to figure out who’s the best SEO consultant that we could get on board. So, yeah, TBD. But hopefully that’s a challenge that we do overcome. 

Brett
The super smart strategy, though. And that makes sense. So the idea there would be millions and millions of users, their names don’t have a lot of people searching for them, I guess, unless it’s like John Smith. So as long as it’s like a somewhat unique name, then low competition and then that’s easy ranking for you to rank for all those names. 

Kelsey Bishop
Exactly. Right. 

Brett
Super smart. Now, as I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised 5 million so far. What have you learned about fundraising? 

Kelsey Bishop
Oh, gosh, so much so I raised a precede round when it was just me and my bubble app. And so my bubble app was a no code version of our mvp. And that round was really difficult. One, it felt super personal. Right. I didn’t have a business, I didn’t have a team, and so it felt like when people are saying no to giving us money, it felt like they were saying no to me in a way which was definitely difficult to hear over and over, all day, every day for six weeks. So that round, I learned a lot from a lot of just, like, patience and grit. And it’s a sales funnel at the end of the day, so you really just have to keep pushing, even when it sucks, and you want to get on a call and just turn it on again. 

Kelsey Bishop
So the second round I did was completely different because we got preempted. So we raised 1.4 in a precede, and then three months later, we got preempted for our seed round, which ended up being a three and a half million dollar round. So that one felt very different because we had a lead come in and say, hey, we want to do two point something, and we’ll help you fill the rest of the round. So that round took about two weeks to fill, and it closed. Got super lucky on timing. Closed right before the market crashed. So my biggest learning about fundraising is, I think it’s mostly luck, and it’s a lot of timing, and finding the right partners was a big thing, too, really like, being excited about the investors that you have on board. 

Brett
And if you were just starting the company again today from scratch, what would be the number one piece of advice you’d give yourself? 

Kelsey Bishop
Don’t listen to any advice anyone else gives you. I think company building is so personal. It takes on your whole life, and the way that you want to do it has to come from you, because otherwise, you’ll be building someone else’s version of a perfect company. And I think you have to be bought into every single part of how you’re company building. You have to be bought into the culture that you create, the teammates that you bring on, the products that you’re building, the mission that you set out, the investors that you bring on. And if it doesn’t come from you have to deal with the consequences. Right. 

Kelsey Bishop
And so, yeah, I think this whole journey has been a test in trusting my own intuition and just really leaning in when I’m like, I feel like this has to be different, or we need to change something, or I think we should go in this direction. Just leaning into listening to your own. 

Brett
Gut, I would say, final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s that big picture vision that you’re building? 

Kelsey Bishop
It’s really around building that authentic LinkedIn. I think the way that we connect professionally today can feel so superficial, right? You show up at a networking event or you connect with someone on LinkedIn and you really don’t get to know the person on a deeper level. And I think the future of work really centers around getting to know each other as humans and finding people that you love to work with. I’m very bullish on feeling like you belong at your workplace. I think belonging and kind of like a sense of fulfillment at work is my personal mission, and helping people find that is really interesting to me. And so if Candor could be anything, it would be a place where people can find belonging at work. 

Kelsey Bishop
It would be a place they can find teammates and workplaces that they absolutely love showing up at every day. I think that would be a major win for us. 

Brett
Amazing. I love the vision. Well, we are up on time, so we’re going to have to wrap here. Before we do, if any founders listening in want to follow along with your journey, where should they go? 

Kelsey Bishop
Joincander.com. You can make a profile. We just launched a way for you to add people as friends, so you can add me as a friend on Candor. And it’s joincandor.com. 

Brett
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat about what you’re building and share some of those lessons that you’ve learned along the way. I really enjoyed the interview and wish you the best of luck in executing on this vision. 

Kelsey Bishop
Thanks so much, Brett. 

Brett
All right, take care. 

Brett
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