William Leonard
Disclo is the first software for employers to collect, verify and manage health disclosures and employee accommodation requests in a HIPAA and SOC2-compliant fashion. There are more than 133 million Americans with chronic conditions or disabilities. So, this is a tremendous problem that has been largely managed by sticky notes and other manual methods. Recent Atlanta transplant and founder of Disclo Hannah Olson struggled with accommodation requests early on in her career, and these struggles empowered her to want to build a solution to fix the broken process of managing employee disclosures. In this conversation, Hannah also shares her biggest lessons learned when it comes to fundraising and what she does differently when raising her first round of venture capital. I really want to thank Hannah for joining me and I know that you all will enjoy this episode. Startup Runway is literally just a few weeks away. We’ve got some open spots left to pitch for the opportunity to win a $10,000 non-dilutive grant for your startup. If you’re interested, learn more details at startuprunway.org. And this Startup Runway is very special because it’s being held on December 15th in conjunction with Valor’s VC Day. Valor is convening many of the leading investors and founders in early-stage technology at the Woodruff Arts Center in Midtown Atlanta. You can expect thoughtfully curated conversations between successful founders and investors around what it takes to succeed at the most difficult stage of VC investing seed stage. To learn more about Valor’s VC day you can go to your browser and type in VC.day, where you can see more details and learn how to register for this special occasion. We’ll see you there. Now back to today’s episode. So let’s jump right in. Hannah, thank you so much for joining me.
Hannah Olson
Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.
William Leonard
It’s always nice and refreshing to have in Atlanta an early-stage founder on the podcast talking about what you’re building. Let’s jump right in would love to one, have you give us maybe a 30 or 6-second overview of what Disclo is then we can dive deeper into your background, the experiences, and exposure that helped you come up with the idea and ultimately begin building Disclo.
Hannah Olson
I’ll keep it short and sweet because I think we’ll get more into the bread and butter of it when we explain the context behind it. But Disclo is short for disclosure. It’s software that is for HR professionals to administer to their employees where folks can safely disclose and ask for accommodations at work. If you were someone living with a chronic health condition, mental illness, or disability, even if you were pregnant, you’d be someone that could use Disclo and it allows you to very safely disclose your disabilities at work.
William Leonard
Awesome. We’re definitely going to dive into that a bit more but tell us more about your background and your origin story as an entrepreneur.
Hannah Olson
The evolution is pretty interesting because Disclo is kind of the brainchild of our second, or our first business, which was called Chronically Capable. We started that back in 2019 and it was actually because of a very interesting reason that we got into this work in the first place. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease while in college and had a really bad case of it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Lyme, but I was bit by a tick at some point in my life and actually had something called a PICC line placed in my arm shortly after my college graduation, which is essentially a permanent IV. I was hooked up to IV antibiotics literally on a pole for eight hours a day for three years which with hindsight is just crazy that it was that long. But when I first entered the workforce, I struggled with talking about this at work. I really did not at the time see myself as someone with a disability. I did not know what the accommodations were or what the Americans with Disabilities Act was. I truly would just want to be normal and be seen and treated equally in the workplace. I really struggled with communicating my needs at work and, unfortunately, long story short, I ended up in a work environment that really wasn’t inclusive and ended up leaving and going to a startup and was fortunate enough to have been hired by my now co-founder. A fun fact is that my co-founder is my former boss. Kai was born and raised in Japan and grew up with a family member who is blind. He’d always been thinking about accessibility. He brought that into the workplace and treated me with dignity, grace, respect, and all those things that you want out of your job. I wanted everyone like me with chronic illnesses and disabilities to have a boss like Kai. A boss who cares and so that’s how we started our first business Chronically Capable, which was a recruiting platform connecting folks with disabilities to jobs that were really in line with their health needs. Through that over the pandemic and through the learnings from Chronically Capable, which I’m sure we’ll get into, was how we kind of stumbled upon really the idea for Disclo and have now moved forward with the second business.
William Leonard
I love that story of how you met your co-founder, your former boss, who showed you the utmost respect in the process of hiring you and working with you with your disability. That’s an amazing and fascinating connection point there. You started Chronically Capable in 2019. I believe you said you built it for a couple of years and then you probably had this internal feeling or internal realization that hey, maybe we can take this a step further. What was that realization for you in the team and when did that happen?
Hannah Olson
Interestingly, we just finished Y Combinator and their whole slogan is “Make Something People Want.” I think we initially thought we were making something that people wanted and I do think people love and adore Chronically Capable. It still exists today. It’s thriving, really signing on new clients, and it’s really the largest community now in North America of chronically ill and disabled professionals which we’re super proud of, but I think we were just scratching the surface with Chronically Capable. We initially saw the issue as being a recruiting problem of how we get more folks into the workplace. But to paint the picture, we were being inundated with messages from our disability community, asking us, how do I disclose my disability at work? Do I qualify for accommodations? Am I disabled? A lot of fear and shame is involved in talking about your illness or disability at work and as you can imagine, it’s a pretty awkward conversation. It’s like, would you tell your boss that you have depression or you’re pregnant? These kinds of things? Odds are you wouldn’t. There’s a really, really low disclosure rate here in the US. Our clients at the time were complaining to us literally and asking us, how do we track this? We’re unable to track this information in our HR systems, it’s illegal. Just to paint the picture, it’s illegal actually to store health information inside of your HR systems. That’s ADA and HIPAA laws that regulate that. It was one of those things where kind of the problem fell in our lap where it was this Aha! moment of, “Hey, people are actually asking us to build this thing.” We knew that there really weren’t any solutions out there, from a technical perspective, that was modernizing and standardizing this process. It was a nice evolution of the business and again, it’s really interesting now figuring out the dynamics of how we’re going to brand both of these businesses and if we’re going to pull them together, keep them separate, all those things. But, I think it goes back to that point of making something people want. People were begging us to make this and I think that that really holds true.
William Leonard
Sounds like this was a pressing need for existing customers already within Chronically Capable. They said, “Hannah, this is something that we need, what can you do about it?” You mentioned that it’s illegal to store health info in HR systems today. I want to understand how is this practically managed now. Is it paper and pen? Is it Excel? What is the management workflow for storing this health information? And then obviously now, you all are empowering HR stakeholders should do this through software, but how are they doing it today?
Hannah Olson
We were honestly shocked to learn how the process worked. After hearing comments about this from our partners, we spoke with a couple of hundred HR leaders last year outside of our personal network and asked how this process looks at their company. And first off, there was no standard, which I found to be pretty interesting because unlike FMLA, which is Family Medical Leave Act if you were pregnant and you were taking leave, it’s a very, very standard process. There’s a set of forms you have to fill out. There are a lot of companies in that space. But ADA was very, very great. There was a lot of confusion about how to handle this data and what you could and couldn’t do. What we heard more often than not was sticky notes were the main method of collecting this data. We had people telling us they quite literally write down, if you were to go to your boss and say, “I have anxiety.” they would write that down and case manage your request by moving sticky notes around a computer and you’d think, it’s 2022, how is this still the process? And for us, it was just like, wow, we really need to build software around this to help just standardize and modernize what’s known as this interactive process. Sticky notes are real. I actually use sticky notes in most of my pitches when I was explaining this. It was really like, my fun party favor was pulling out sticky notes.
William Leonard
No, I’m sure investors definitely appreciated that. It’s quite shocking that there’s no standard process or has been no standard process for this and that sticky notes were the primary means of tracking this, which honestly seems more of a HIPAA violation than anything else that is currently listed. That is quite shocking. And so now, you’ve built some software today. Who is Disclo targeting right now? Is it small and medium-sized businesses, or large enterprises? How do you identify your core customer profile today?
Hannah Olson
Uniquely, the law that we’re going after is the regulation Americans with Disabilities Act. It actually applies to all companies with 15 employees or more which makes the market size pretty large. But I think we’re trying to hone in on what our ICP is at the moment because we have quite a mix of customers. So far, we have anywhere from 100 people to now signing on currently a 19,000-person company. I think we’re in the midst of trying to figure out exactly who to put our spend toward and target but I’d say the need is there. I think, to begin with, we’re probably going to start in kind of mid-enterprise and then grow into the enterprise. But we also want to make sure we have the team to be able to support large clients. It’s pretty interesting going from zero to 100, within two months. Trying to build up the team to scale with the clients.
William Leonard
Speaking of the team, tell us more about the team that you’re building with today. You told us how you met one of your co-founders, how many team members do y’all have today? Are y’all scattered throughout the country? I know you’re here in Atlanta.
Hannah Olson
We are scattered. We are building a remote workforce and I think it holds true to our values of building an inclusive and flexible work environment. I think we’re hiring people that really believe in this mission. It’s a unique product, right? We’re not building something that is, I don’t know what the good analogy is here, but maybe I’ll just not say anything. It’s better than saying something at all but we’re building a product that matters. I think our team is really standing behind the mission and is excited about growing and being a part of it from day one, which is super exciting. We’ve got some folks in Idaho, my co-founders in Austin, Texas, and we’re now in Denver, New York, and North Carolina. It’s pretty wild, growing a team remotely in this environment as well. I just came off the country tour going around, meeting folks, and getting to see people in person. It’s been wild because it’s very, very interesting going from the two of us to now, the eight of us and counting.
William Leonard
I love that. You just mentioned how you went on this tour and met everybody who’s dispersed across the country. Are there any advantages as you kind of think about the macro state of the workforce today, you have a lot of companies who were hybrid or remote full-time, and now they’re kind of bringing everybody back into the office. But are there any advantages that you see as a CEO to building a remote and distributed workforce?
Hannah Olson
I could list so many here and we do provide the opportunity for folks to have a stipend to go to a co-working space or seek out office space if that’s their jam. I know, it’s mine. But I think building a remote workforce really allows you to meet more folks and not be siloed into this one geographic location, but it also allows you to tap into talent. I think the companies that are forcing folks to come back are losing talent amidst this great recession that we’re living in, the great resignation. I think it’s it’s difficult to keep talent and you have to give them what they want. We saw during COVID the benefits of having a remote and flexible workforce and if we’re forcing people to return to work, I think we’re gonna start to see drops in morale, productivity, loyalty to the company, all of these things. I think we’re building a team that is flexible and is living the values that we’re preaching, which is accommodations. I could talk about that for a while, but hopefully, that’d be a nice picture.
William Leonard
It does. That’s a great perspective. You see all the news articles right now of large tech companies forcing employees back into the office and then you’re also hearing another side of that, large droves of employees quitting and going to find a remote opportunity. You kind of hit the nail on that.
Hannah Olson
The layoffs. I mean, LinkedIn is a pretty sad environment these days, every time you log on, there are these mass layoffs. You are an early-stage company. I think one of the big opportunities during this economic uncertainty and all of these things is that it’s a good time to hire and find talent that was previously getting overpaid at these large companies. They’re willing to roll their sleeves up and work for an early-stage startup, which is pretty unique. So it’s a good time to hire.
William Leonard
Definitely see a lot of that even within our own portfolio at Valor. Well, you’ve been an early-stage founder for some time now. Obviously, one of the biggest parts of building a company is fundraising and I want to dive into your fundraising journey a bit. What have you learned while going out to seek capital from investors? It’s often a daunting, time-consuming, and dreadful process you hear but it’s also rewarding in the fact that you’re able to get this capital in and go hire more people to build this company that has the goal of changing the world. What are some of the lessons learned on your early fundraising journey as an early-stage founder?
Hannah Olson
Fundraising is a wild journey put simply. You have to be in it for the long haul. You have to have grit and you have to be okay with getting turned down, and that was something that was really hard for me at first. I took things very personally and it’s been a very different dynamic fundraising for this new business versus our previous one. I think people immediately got this idea. We had the hype of Y Combinator, we had some great early investors on the cap table, and so we were able to kind of generate that buzz. But speaking of my journey last year, I think it’s even more relevant than it’s hard. A lot of people don’t know that we got 124 nos last year then getting Bain Capital and then Hippeau and all these great funds to come on. That was defeating to have 124 different funds saying no to you, that’s pretty soul-sucking but when I got to the point where I started to also evaluate the people that were evaluating me, I started to realize that this is a marriage and a marriage if one person is in and the other is not, it’s not going to be a fruitful marriage. The same goes for finding your investors. These are people who have to believe in you and the ones that can’t get that conviction or wait for others to get that conviction, they’re probably not the best partners for you for the long term. They say patience is a virtue and that holds true in fundraising. I think it’s a brutal environment right now as well. I think consumer startups are struggling right now to raise. I think the crypto space is a big question mark but I think having grit and then I think just being relentless. I tell my friends all the time, it’s not about sending one email a day. It’s about being scrappy, messaging people on Twitter, and sending random LinkedIn messages. You have to be pounding out messages. It’s like sales really. While it’s soul-sucking, you just got to hold, stay strong, and optimize for the right partners. One thing I say to every investor is if an investor’s listening to this and you’ve spoken to me, you’ve probably heard me say this. If you haven’t spoken to me, I will say this to you, is that I always leave every conversation by saying I want to optimize for folks that I want to have dinner with, that I want to sit around a table and share a meal with because these long term relationships you’re getting into.
William Leonard
That’s so true. 124 nos can be very defeating. You mentioned that you took a lot of it personally at the beginning. It’s hard not to take that personally when you’re talking, you’re pitching, you’re exerting so much energy, and it’s just a no. When you kind of think about the beginning of that fundraising journey, what do you wish you knew then that you now know, months later, maybe a year later that could have shifted or changed your whole fundraising targeting journey?
Hannah Olson
What I wish I know, number one I think would be to not just reach out to every single person under the sun to really look for strategic investors and do your research. A lot of my 124 nos came from funds that were just not relevant to what we were doing. I wasted a lot of time having first, second, and third calls with people that just weren’t getting the conviction. And if you can tell, you can tell by the second call if this is worthwhile. If not, walk away because your time is also valuable. And number two, I’d say I had a number two, but I’m blanking on my number two.
William Leonard
No, it’s okay. You’re right. If I can say this from an investor perspective, right? We try and get to a decision as quickly as possible when we are evaluating a company whether it’s a yes or no or like hey, where we’re kind of stuck or thinking about this. So true. We try and get to that but I think you remember your number two,
Hannah Olson
I did. Be confident. I used to speak with fear and I think a lot of that is because I was a woman, then you add that I’m someone who is now self-identifying as having a disability, and also as gay. I had a triple whammy when I was going out into these rooms. It was complicated. People knew that about me if you did a little Google search. I think I added that level of fear when I’d go into a room and almost this lack of confidence. When I started to act like a good friend said to me, the train is moving and you have to have this mentality that the train is moving, they can either hop on or hop off the train, but the train is going to keep moving forward. You have to have that mentality. And so I started to be a little bit more of a shark, like, we’ve got a lot of interests, you got to come on, and that kind of confidence, I think, really changed the dynamic. I’d say be confident in yourself and be confident in your idea because investors can sniff out the fear.
William Leonard
That’s so true. Also, confidence can go a long way, and pairing that with a solid presentation, knowing the industry and the business like the back of your hand, that resonates with an investor, especially in a first or second call. When you are meeting with an associate first and then going to speak with a General Partner, that can leave a truly positive impact and accelerate things internally. Really strong insights there, Hannah. As we wrap up this conversation here, how do you see the industry that you’re building in right now evolving over the next 5,10, or 15 years? I was reading a statistic, there are 133 million Americans that are struggling with chronic conditions and disabilities. What is the opportunity here to help these Americans become more confident and begin disclosing these things in the workplace?
Hannah Olson
I’d say you’re right, 60% of US adults live with at least one chronic health condition. That’s the stat from CDC, you can backcheck me on that one. I’ve memorized that but to add to that, there are a billion people in the world with a disability. This is not a small group of people. It’s actually the world’s largest minority population, whether we know it or not. The reason we don’t often know is that 70% of disabilities are invisible. But I’d say from the employee perspective, we’re at a really interesting point where this trend is only going up. Every single year, we’re seeing more and more chronic diseases due to environmental factors, due to smoking, all of these kinds of things, heart conditions, but also adding in COVID long haul now covered, certain types of pregnancies, and so I think more and more people are starting to self identify. I think if we can start to create a culture where people do identify at work, it becomes a lot more normalized and a lot less taboo. I think it makes for a workplace that’s better for everyone because now suddenly, you don’t have to hide a huge piece of who you are at work. The other thing I want to touch on is the time and the trends for the employers and why now I think it’s really interesting because it’s a really tough time to fundraise. But one of the reasons we were able to fundraise is because during the last recession, actually, it was the highest rate of lawsuits for companies. The biggest spike in the EEOC history of lawsuits. Companies were getting sued for higher amounts of money and more often, during hard financial times. Given that disability is now the number one category of lawsuits for companies, discrimination lawsuits that is. We know that in these weird, uncertain financial times that we’re in right now, this is the time for disclosure. This is a time to help companies stay compliant to get their ducks in a row. I think we’re at a really interesting intersection of trends both from the employee and the employer side. I always say it’s Disclo time.
William Leonard
I love that. I did not know that disability is the number one category for discrimination lawsuits. That’s an incredible statistic. Very sad.
Hannah Olson
It’s on the rise. It’s really gotten bad over the last few years and EEOC is cracking down. EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I think that’s right. They’re the federal agency that sues companies and disability is on the rise. They’re cracking down. They just hired a bunch of new people and they’ve publicly announced that they’re coming after companies. Companies need to think about that. Any company that has 15 employees or more. This is a real problem that until you get slapped with a lawsuit, you might not realize, but not to scare people into compliance but I’m scaring you into compliance.
William Leonard
I think you should because like you said, this creates a better workforce for everyone on the team. Many people are afraid to disclose that and if you have the safe space to, one, have your disability managed, tracked, and accommodated, that just makes your workday so much easier on top of the actual work responsibilities that you have to manage and bear already. I really loved this conversation, Hannah. You mentioned that Disclo is for companies with a minimum of 15 employees, which is probably millions of businesses, not only in the US but across the world. What is the best way for one of our audience members who maybe is a startup or an enterprise with more than 15 employees to get in touch with you or someone at Disclo to try out your software and maybe bring it within their business?
Hannah Olson
You can reach out to our team on our website which is https://www.disclo.com/. Disclo is spelled like Disco but you add an “l” in there. And yes, we do have disco balls in our office. But yeah, disclo.com, reach out to us there. Our team is ready and willing to support you. We’re excited.
William Leonard
I heard you have disco balls in your office so party at Disclo HQ. When is that coming? Just kidding.
Hannah Olson
We’re actually talking about having disco parties at an HR event and stuff as really fun marketing. I don’t know if it’ll be fun. But yeah, come by the office.
William Leonard
I love it, Hannah. Thank you so much for joining me today and looking forward to seeing how you build Disclo to become a prominent business solving important problems for enterprises and individuals alike. Thank you so much, Hannah.
Hannah Olson
Thanks for having me.
William Leonard
Cheers. Take care.
Lisa Calhoun
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