#StartupsEverywhere: Irma Olguin Jr. and Jake Soberal, Co-CEOs and Co-Founders, Bitwise Industries.
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Irma Olguin Jr. (left) and Jake Soberal (right), the Co-CEOs and Co-Founders of Bitwise Industries.
Activating Tech Workers in Underserved and Overlooked Communities
Founded in 2013 to improve Fresno’s technology ecosystem, Bitwise Industries is a startup that’s working to increase workforce opportunities for diverse and often marginalized workers in “underdog cities.” We recently spoke with Bitwise’s Co-CEOs and Co-Founders, Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin Jr., to learn more about their startup’s work, what makes Bitwise’s business model so unique, and how policymakers can work to support a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce.
What in your background made you interested in supporting the growth and development of tech workers?
Irma Olguin Jr.: Same as many cities across the nation, Fresno is a challenged place, and what ends up happening is that people often have a limited view of what they expect their life to be. And that was me as a young person. I ended up accidentally going to college and accidentally choosing computer science and computer engineering as my major. Fresno is an agricultural area, so working in technology isn’t what I expected to be doing with my life. But this experience in the technology industry really excited me, and I felt that the opportunity to work in this sector needed to be spread to more people. The technology industry shouldn’t be an unfathomable option, or an accident for anyone.
So, I moved back to California after finishing my degree and took what I learned to provide some of that opportunity to other places and people. I looked around Fresno, and I realized that we could create change with just a couple of ingredients. It became about reaching into the community and inviting people to the technology industry who previously did not have a seat at the table.
Jake Soberal: I didn’t come to this work with a background as an entrepreneur. My formal training was as an intellectual property attorney, and I had only just begun to practice in Fresno a few years before starting Bitwise. What I did have was a deep rooted love for Fresno, and a desire to create a more equitable city through economic development. When I met Irma all the pieces came together.
I was born in Los Angeles but grew up in Fresno, went away for school, started my career in Southern California, and then came back with the idea that—whatever I was going to do—I wanted to contribute to the betterment of my hometown, Fresno. After starting some programs designed to revitalize our downtown I connected with Irma based on the work we were doing separately. I was deeply impressed with the work she was doing and wanted to enhance it. We were approaching the same problem through different means: I was looking at the issue through economic development, Irma through tech education. We realized pretty quickly that the needs of an underdog city and the needs of the technology industry could be solved by each other. Fresno needed to connect people to high-growth, high-wage jobs, and the technology industry desperately needed talent, and had a well-documented problem with representation. By working together and combining what we were doing, we knew that we could have a higher impact on both.
Tell us more about Bitwise and the work that you’re doing. How does your ecosystem approach helping to develop the next generation of tech talent?
Irma Olguin Jr.: At Bitwise, we do three things: we teach people to code, we build places for them where they have a sense of belonging, and we provide opportunity to the industry itself/pathways into it. Those three things are not special by themselves, but they’re really special when utilized together in what we call “underdog” cities, where these pathways don’t exist. Too often, the opportunity to be a technologist, to be around other technologists, and to be inspired by the tech industry is reserved for large cities. So these three components serve as a starter pack for the tech industry that can be replicated in any city across the nation. And when you do that enough times, it percolates up to a movement where you begin to see the impact and it starts looking like a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce.
Jake Soberal: We started Bitwise because we believed we could bridge that gap in the community and have a positive impact on our city. Across the nation there are cities similar to our hometown, experiencing the same struggles and millions of people who can be positively impacted by the way we are approaching workforce. We didn’t know on day-one that cities all around the country were wrestling with these same problems, so the solutions we’re developing here could have implications for other places as well.
What are some of the steps that local, state, or federal lawmakers can take to further support workforce development and entrepreneurial success?
Jake Soberal: Governments at all levels have a toolset that can be used to impact diversity and inclusion, not only in tech but every industry, and it has to do with procurement. An extraordinary percentage of the tech work being done today is for federal, state, and local governments. If they make very intentional buying decisions from vendors that have a commitment to raising up more diverse talent, then they can be a huge actor in achieving real change.
I’d give a specific nod to the states of California and Colorado who are working with us on a program we call the Digital New Deal. It’s designed to raise up a diverse tech workforce by giving procurement preferences to diverse companies, as well as organizing apprenticeship programs where we pair a senior programmer with an apprentice from the lower-third of the economy. This work is similar to programs initiated during the Great Depression, and our belief is the Digital New Deal represents a framework for raising up the next generation of diverse technology talent from the current economic recession.
While it’s especially relevant now, the Digital New Deal also has an enduring relevance outside the context of the pandemic. We know we have such deep displacement right now with many people unemployed or underemployed, and we need intentional and aggressive structures to put them back to work. This is an opportunity to do so in a more equitable way that connects people to work that is going to sustain a more prosperous future, not only for them but their families as well.
Irma Olguin Jr.: The pandemic and other negative world events are having a disproportionate impact on already disenfranchised populations, but state and federal governments can take steps to prevent that in the future. What that looks like is greater access to opportunity, jobs, etc. We can help accomplish this by using already budgeted software projects and other training opportunities to lessen the impact of the “next” thing that will happen. We need to prepare for the future and think about recovery at a national level from where we’re at today. I know from working with the state of California that there’s a huge appetite for enacting these types of policies. We’ve made progress in awarding contracts to companies, for example, based on whether they're minority-owned and women-owned. But where we’re not doing well is determining who that work will ultimately benefit.
How are you working to promote diversity in the tech workforce, and what steps can entrepreneurs and federal policymakers take to support these types of efforts on a larger scale?
Jake Soberal: What we fail to acknowledge in the technology industry is that our entire system for sourcing talent intentionally reaches out to a particular candidate, usually an affluent white male. So, instead, what we at Bitwise do is intentionally reach out to people who have historically been excluded from opportunities. This includes communities of color, communities of concentrated poverty, non-binary individuals, and women—people who are often excluded from the technology industry.
This type of work means directly inviting people into training courses, as well as creating cohorts with others of similar backgrounds who make them feel safe and welcomed. That means putting those same individuals who have been left out at the front of the room. What happens then is that people gain a sense of belonging, which allows them to exercise the skills they’re learning and to pursue these types of opportunities in a fully realized way. As a result, the workforce being created in every city we serve is more diverse than anywhere in the United States. We want to create a workforce that is not only equitable but representative of what the country actually looks like.
How has Bitwise been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and are there any steps that you believe policymakers should take at this time to further support entrepreneurs and tech workers?
Jake Soberal: The impact on entrepreneurs has varied widely, depending on the age, stage, and industry of the companies. Unfortunately, that traces to the ethnicity and gender of the founder as well. We disproportionately have early-stage companies led by women and people of color that do not have the safety net that later-stage companies often do. This is often a result of the glaring differences in the way founders of colors are treated compared to white, male founders.
The federal government was right to move quickly on Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans during the pandemic. From our view, however, there should have been continued and sustained funding from the beginning of the pandemic until now.
Without PPP, though, I think you would have seen a larger number of early-stage companies wiped out in communities like Fresno. Our hometown, just like the rest of the country, has been majorly impacted by the financial fallout caused by the virus and we saw an opportunity to act. As a response to the crise we launched a platform with the Kapor Center called OnwardUS as part of an emergency response effort to help Americans affected by the pandemic.
We realized that many of our friends and neighbors in the communities that we serve were losing their jobs in the earliest days of the pandemic, and we wanted to provide people with the resources they needed to survive the economic impact. This included resources like essential services, training, and opportunities for jobs for those who had been laid off. This has become the largest pandemic-specific workforce platform in the United States, and we will continue this work during what we expect to be a long-term recovery.
What makes Fresno’s tech ecosystem so unique?
Irma Olguin Jr.: Folks in Fresno have a hunger for something “next.” They’re scrappy and ambitious, and we found that this is the kindling needed for change. So Bitwise and other organizations came together to light the match.
Fresno is representative of other underdog cities in this way. Many cities have that same hunger and ambition. And when you add on an organization like Bitwise, there is an immediate and profound effect on that place.
People look at the technology industry as a beacon of what could be in their own hometown. When you put all of the ingredients Bitwise is proposing, then there’s a solution for a diverse and inclusive workforce in underdog cities.
What is your goal for Bitwise moving forward as you work to lift up underdog cities?
Jake Soberal: Last year, we announced plans to expand to three additional cities in California: Bakersfield, Merced, and Oakland. Despite differences in each of those cities, we’ve seen that similar sets of people are excluded or left out of opportunities in those places. They have immense talent to add to the equation, and we’ve been able to activate some of that talent in really exciting ways. So we’re excited to continue expanding the scope of Bitwise across the nation and repeating our proven approach in new cities that we serve.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email edward@engine.is.
