Carlos Ganoza - Top 50 Leaders Shaping the Gig Economy

Carlos Ganoza

VP of Product

Wonolo

Wonolo is an ongoing and on-demand job marketplace that has connected over three million workers ("Wonoloers") to retail, manufacturing, hospitality, and other types of jobs posted by thousands of businesses across the United States. Wonolo is on a mission to make work flexible and fulfilling for everyone while enabling businesses to efficiently fill local job opportunities. For more information, visit www.wonolo.com.

Expanding access to opportunities for workers

Carlos’s career of over 25 years in multiple organizations has been focused on delivering social impact by expanding access to economic opportunities.

Carlos shared, "One mission particularly close to my heart was the challenges workers have to access the high-quality jobs in Latin America, in my home country of Peru.”

Carlos began his journey in the Peruvian Government, leading a team of advisors to the Minister of Economy and Finance, designing and implementing policies in investment promotion and business climate, labor market reform, and infrastructure.

Carlos shared, “I was working on the labor market reforms to improve the inclusion of young people in the labor market without much experience. I had the opportunity to get very close to that problem space and understand their difficulties."

Carlos realized that the current top-down approach for improving worker’s access to high-quality jobs was inefficient. The problem can be solved with a different approach that connects workers who want jobs and employers who want to hire workers directly via technology.

This led to the birth of Quantum Talent.

Building Quantum Talent

Carlos founded Quantum Talent in Peru and acquired an initial set of customers in the local market. Many of the Peruvian customers had operations in multiple Latin American countries. Carlos realized the growth required expansion to the new markets outside of Peru. He led the expansion of the customer base to Brazil, Mexico, and other markets in Latin America, leveraging the success of Peruvian customers.

Quantum Talent sold its product as a staffing SaaS (Software as a service) platform for companies in retail, call center, light industrial, consumer goods, banking, and other industries.

"Carlos shared: "(At Quantum Talent) We had a SaaS model. So, companies purchased a subscription to our service based on how many people they were expecting to hire on our platform.

We built the machine learning technology that screened candidates by predicting which candidates would have good tenure at the company.

The most important thing that companies wanted to do was reduce worker turnover. So, our models were very accurate at predicting tenure."

Quantum Talent’s compelling business model, combined with cutting-edge machine learning technology, led to rapid growth throughout Latin America.

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Rising to the challenge of COVID-19

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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Latin America, almost all governments, especially those in Quantum Talent’s key markets, implemented strict lockdown.

The lockdowns had a massive impact on Quantum Talent’s customers in Latin America as they were prohibited from physically attending to customers or having too many people concentrated in a single area, such as in a contact center or a warehouse.

This led to over 70% revenue loss in a month, with customers canceling or pausing their subscriptions for hiring using the platform.

Carlos knew he had a compelling IP for staffing with a highly differentiated machine-learning model for tenure prediction. It was time to find a new market that was still growing in the middle of the pandemic.

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Quantum Talent expands to the United States and meets Wonolo

Carlos focused on smaller customers in the United States, targeting organizations that did not have a large recruiting team but needed to staff up quickly in their stores, warehouses, and factories.

He also explored teaming up with a large established player in the staffing market in the United States. That’s how he connected with Wonolo, the leader in on-demand staffing with over three million workers.

Carlos: "I cared a lot about the purpose of our company, And that's very connected with how I want to spend my time and what things, what kind of things I find meaningful. And I also care about a lot about the culture.

So, even though purpose is really important for me, culture is not a means but an end by itself.”

Quantum Talent and Wonolo matched perfectly on both criteria: the purpose of driving opportunities for workers to improve their lives and an open culture that fosters collaboration and innovation, staying clear of politics.

Carlos: "...I think we were incredibly lucky because I found both things at Wonolo. I found a purpose-driven company. The founder, Yong (Kim), the CEO is a guy who, is a person who really believes in the company's mission and makes a constant effort to make sure that people understand the kind of impact that we can have on workers' lives through our product."

Quantum Talent became a part of Wonolo to drive the next phase of growth for the organization.

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Building the future of staffing at Wonolo with machine learning, location intelligence, and Generative AI

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Carlos is building on top of the core machine learning IP to predict the tenure of 1099 and W-2 workers with a couple of key initiatives.

The first initiative includes adding location intelligence to the Wonolo platform to provide shift validation for identifying and backfilling no-shows and resolving time and attendance issues with location data for hours worked.

Carlos is also exploring generative AI to improve the efficiency of Wonolo’s platform for matching workers with jobs, especially screening the workers for a specific job.

Carlos: "When you can use AI, Not to substitute Simple decisions that people need to make but to expand the decisions that people are making or improve complex decisions that people are making. That's when you leverage the benefits of AI.‍‍

And in our industry, that means basically using AI to improve how you match workers with jobs, how do you screen workers? And that's incredibly complex, and people constantly underestimate the complexity of it."

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Building the staffing marketplace with flexibility and predictable income for the worker

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Carlos shares that part of the population is focused on flexibility in where they want to work, when they want to work, and how soon they are paid. The bulk of the flexible workforce is also looking for predictable income, along with the flexibility of choosing their hours and work location. Carlos is focused on providing the best platform for these workers, where they can have predictable income combined with the flexibility of shift work.

Carlos: "As you get older, change becomes more difficult. So, as you get older, you'd rather do something that you are comfortable doing with that you already know how to do and that, you know will give you a stable and predictable income.

Also, as you get older and you have a family, family anchors you around a schedule certain needs. So you need more predictability around that. So, well, I definitely think that, And thats not necessarily at odds with giving people more flexibility. You can give people both things: flexibility and predictable income."

Journey of a startup founder - facing your demons and thriving

We asked Carlos to share the most surprising aspect of building a startup. Carlos shared the most vital part of a founder’s journey: facing your demons and thriving as you grow to challenge them.

Carlos: "I didn't anticipate one source of difficulty. I, of course, anticipated the long hours and the frustrations and having to constantly experiment (with product and GTM). But I think a part of being a founder that is not discussed enough is how it forces you to face your own demons."

As a successful entrepreneur, Carlos finds it meaningful to connect with other founders who care deeply about the problem and are passionately committed to solving it.

Carlos: "...I connect more with founders who care deeply about the problem that they are, trying to solve. And, and that’s the type of founder I was, in any case. And, and then, if, in that situation, you know, its really like, I'm going to solve this problem or Im going to die trying, basically, Right? It becomes something that's really personal. So only when you're almost, agonizing you start considering that you cannot do it anymore. But until then, it doesnt matter how painful it is. You keep going and that was my case.”

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Staffing made simple. Find workers wherever, whenever. Talk With Our Team Today. Find Hard Workers Easily. Fill your on-demand, temp, seasonal and temp-to-perm needs with locally available talent that is ready to work. Full Visibility. Full Transparency. Wonolo provides a simplified, efficient way to meet your labor needs.

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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wonolo, the leading online platform disrupting the temporary staffing industry, today announced the raise of a $138 million growth round, led by Leeds Illuminate with strong participation from 137 Ventures and G2 Venture Partners. Franklin Templeton also came in on the round. This latest round brings Wonolo's total venture funding to over $200 million.