Previously, Federico started and grew multiple businesses which allowed him to pay his college tuition by himself. While building his teams, he was always frustrated with the lack of objective data available to him when recruiting new hires. He decided to go after the problem when he found that even research showed resumes to be poor predictors of job performance and created bias against underrepresented applicants. Raphael was working for an AI startup that focused on enterprise software, and learned directly from the CEO.

As Freshmen, Federico and Raphael hacked together their first prototype with less than $500 and launched it by the beginning of the spring semester. Unfortunately, they were rejected from every accelerator program they applied to initially. Still, thanks to the mentorship of advisors like James Bottom from Blackstone Launchpad, they focused on solving a real problem for their users and built several iterations for their product until they got their first paying customers. With early traction and connections which they had made, they secured their first $25,000 check from an investor and subsequently incorporated Yobs out of Raphael’s dorm room for free by leveraging USC resources. With capital and early traction, they decided to work 40+ hours a week on their business starting that Summer.

Together with their CTO Nate's deep technical background and world-class advisors they on-boarded along the way, Federico and Raphael turned their idea into a business: An API-first platform that helps large companies remove bias from their hiring process with behavioral science and video data.

As of June 2019, Yobs has raised US$1.5 million in funding from investors in the US, Europe and Hong Kong. The company has since expanded its business to applications in HR, Sales, Customer Support, Defense, Politics and Education. Their current clients include several of the Fortune 500 organizations as well as world-renown institutions. Yobs was also the fund recipient of HKUST Entrepreneurship Acceleration Fund in 2016-17, the awardee of the Venture Validation Award at USC in 2018 and the recipient of 'best AI startup in HR' by Manpower Group in 2019.

Federico and Raphael are both immigrants based in Los Angeles where they obtained an O1 visa extraordinary achievements. They work at Yobs full-time alongside their team and invest and advise other promising startups founded by immigrants and underrepresented founders.

Click here to learn more about Yobs Technology!

I really like the idea of starting something fresh and following my own creative vision to create something that adds value. This led to a discussion about how this problem could be solved, which inspired Agora.

We launched the Agora website a few weeks ago, and it’s named after the Greek marketplaces where people came together to buy and sell items. Agora is a peer-to-peer marketplace for the USC community. Students upload items for sale on the site, allowing other students to browse through until they find something they need or like.

Right now we are running Agora as a minimum viable product to see if the USC community adopts the platform as a ‘go to’ exchange service. Once we have an established consumer base, we hope to transition into becoming the central marketplace for students on campus and possibly expand to other schools around the U.S."

“The WBB community has been a great help in getting Agora started. We’ve been consulting our friends in WBB since day one. Some of them advertised for us on their Instagrams, and many of them have already uploaded items on our website to sell!

The process that one goes through to create a business is no easy feat, and it has a very steep learning curve. I think this makes entrepreneurship so much more compelling than a typical day job.

I would definitely like to explore entrepreneurship further in my career whether it be through starting another company, working at a startup, or in venture capital. At the end of the day, entrepreneurship is what drives change and development in society - a very promising industry to be in.”

Source: MeetWBB