Most startups are looking to solve a problem inside a business, but Bandana, a New York City-based startup, has a different goal. It wants to help people at the lower end of the wage scale find better jobs with higher wages and good benefits, all while being closer to home to reduce commuting time.
Today, the company announced an $8.5 million investment, bringing the total raised to $12.3 million.
When we spoke to CEO and co-founder Timothy Makalinao last year at the time of the startup’s seed funding announcement, he described his company this way:
“Essentially what we’re trying to do is to create a platform that rejuvenates the working class of America by making it really easy for them to find better jobs, and then in the long term, better livelihoods.”
That has taken the form of a website, with not only job listings, but a map that shows jobs by location, so folks don’t have to commute too far to get to work. Every job lists a detailed description, the pay range, the estimated take-home pay after taxes, a list of benefits and the location on the map.
But in spite of the altruistic mission, it’s still a business, and as such, it has performance objectives like any other startup. “Since we last spoke, the biggest thing is that we launched Bandana.com and it was actually hugely successful,” Makalinao told TechCrunch.
The site lists between 18,000 and 25,000 jobs on any given day. It has had more than 150,000 New York City job seekers come directly to the site since the launch, and they’ve been able to get this kind of traction with almost no advertising spend. “More than 130,000 of those 150,000 workers came organically to our platform,” he said. To this point, he estimates between 10,000 and 15,000 people have found jobs through the site.
They’ve achieved all of this through clever content marketing, working both TikTok and Instagram to drive traffic to the website. “Essentially what we’ve done is we’ve created these videos that allow you to find out more about [specific] jobs, and also understand and highlight really great businesses around New York City,” he said.
As an example, they created a video on the career trajectory of a Costco cashier. That video garnered over 12 million views on TikTok, according to Makalinao. Another video highlighted a restaurant in Harlem that makes Puerto Rican food, and it’s gotten over 150,000 views with lots of engagement, while driving traffic to the highlighted business.
The social media campaign not only drives traffic to Bandana and helps it put a spotlight on New York businesses, it allows them to acquire job seekers for just 1.5 cents per user, a ridiculously low cost of acquisition, something that caught the attention of investors.
This month, the company is planning to expand beyond NYC to encompass a wider area, including New Jersey residents who commute to work in Manhattan, as well as Long Island and north of the Bronx toward Scarsdale. They also plan to start posting similar kinds of jobs in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area by Q1 2025.
In addition, they are looking to expand beyond social media campaigns to more conventional forms of advertising in subways, bus stations, billboards and so forth, and the new money should help finance these efforts and widen awareness about Bandana.
So far, the company has been mostly concentrating on getting workers to come to the site, rather than monetization, but recently they added sponsored posts as a way to make money initially.
Future plans for the site include a generative AI search tool to help job seekers find jobs simply by describing what they want. They also hope eventually to expand into training, certifications and financial literacy.
The new investment was led by General Catalyst with participation from returning investors Craft Ventures and Triple Impact Capital.
