This Startup Makes Company Org Charts Public, And Just Launched A New Job Search Platform…

In the summer of 2017, Christian Wylonis read an article that changed his career path. Titled “The People Who Matter at Airbnb,” The Information story featured the company’s organizational chart, including who held what title, and who reported to who.

“This article went super viral. It was kind of immediately obvious to me why someone outside of Airbnb would be curious about this information,” says Wylonis, 36. “We are so interested in understanding who are the real humans behind these iconic brands. It also showed there was this unmet demand in the market for team information.”

Piggybacking on The Information’s success, Wylonis and cofounder Andreas Jarbol, 31, launched their startup, The Org, a few months later. Their goal is simple: to give businesses a platform to create free, public organizational charts and, in doing so, become more transparent. 

With $11.2 million in funding from investors such as Sequoia, Founders Fund and Balderton, more than 100,000 users visit The Org each week, compared to 5,000 a year ago. The company has headquarters in both New York and Copenhagen, where CTO Jarbol lives.

On Tuesday, the startup announced the launch of its new Jobs platform, which allows companies to list open roles within their public org charts (also for free), giving job seekers the opportunity to see who their future teammates and supervisors might be, and how they’d fit into the company.

“I think it’s good there is disruption in the space that has been owned by LinkedIn and Indeed and big companies like that,” says Wylonis, The Org’s CEO. “This is a platform where startups can get more exposure. On LinkedIn and Indeed, you will drown in jobs from places like Coca Cola with bigger marketing budgets to promote it.”

In the past year, the number of org charts on the site has increased by 900%, from 15,000 to 115,000 companies. Those employers include tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, as well as startups such as Postmates, Airbnb and Robinhood. And it’s number of registered users has gone from 10,000 to 60,000. Of course, this pales in comparison to LinkedIn’s more than 722 million members worldwide and Indeed’s 250 million unique visitors a month.

Why would a company want to make public the inner-workings of their teams? To attract talent and customers, Wylonis says. He also believes such transparency can drive meaningful social change.

“One of the big problems with diversity is the lack of accountability,” he says. “We will finally get true accountability on companies doing well and hold the ones behind accountable.”

Org charts are created in two ways: Companies can create and update their own org charts, or Wylonis’ research team will do it for them, aggregating data from business’ websites, mastheads and other publicly available resources.

Monetization has come second to Wylonis’ lofty goal. The company currently makes money through its recruitment tool, Scout, which identifies candidates for specific jobs and schedules interviews with both parties.

At THEMAGIC5, a North Carolina-based custom swim goggles startup, cofounder and partner Rasmus Barfred says his business’ listing on The Org has helped attract new talent, with one job posting finding a highly qualified candidate within 24 hours.

Barfred also directs potential external partners to The Org to help them understand his business from an organizational perspective. The people who make up a company, and the responsibilities they have, say a lot about how a business operates, he says.

“We have nothing to hide,” Barfred says. “On the contrary, being more transparent and showing who we are makes our business a more compelling work-place for new employees, as they can see what they are getting into from a human capital point of view.”