Mateo: What if we volunteered once a week over the course of a month to
create a new home or to do a clothing drive, to donate a lot of clothes?
Like there are so many more opportunities to create a deeper impact if we're
able to strengthen the connection with nonprofits and companies.
I think that would be the long term vision once we're able to, I
guess, get our feet off the ground,
RaphaÃ«l: That's super cool.
Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way, but it is like, it's almost like what
you're providing is like dipping your toe into the water and then there's this
opportunity after that to really dig in.
and how did you get to this point in your life, your career?
Like what, what led you to start this company?
Mateo: it was during the pandemic, me and a few friends not having
much to do over the summer.
we said, hey, why not, build a volunteer website?
And that's where I met my co founder, Alex, who helped us basically build
out our directory of different organizations you could volunteer with.
And what started out as initial, like a side project, when we started working with
different high schools to help students fulfill their graduation requirements.
That's when we started, like, licensing an actual product and turning it into,
like, from a side project into a company.
RaphaÃ«l: Hey folks, and welcome to another episode of the small tech podcast.
I'm your host Raph, and we've got another wonderful guest today.
He is Mateo Jeanneau, the CEO and co founder of Keen to Help, the company that
makes it easy to help your community.
They connect companies and their employees with volunteering opportunities.
One of the ways they do that is with these really neat boxes that
companies can order, and which create a really cool team building exercise.
But even better, is that what comes out of that exercise is actually something that
is useful and valuable to a non profit.
I first connected with Mateo's co founder, Alex, a little while ago
around the idea of of measuring impact.
Eventually that turned into some conversations about Keen to Help
and I thought it'd be really cool to talk about it on the podcast.
I learned a lot from Mateo about launching a company during COVID, transitioning
from a side project into a company, and testing product assumptions.
I really enjoyed the conversation, and I hope you do too.
Hey, Mateo.
How's it going?
Mateo: Doing well.
How about yourself?
How are you doing
RaphaÃ«l: Yeah, I am doing all right.
Um, so I just want to dive right into it , how about you
tell me what is Keen to Help?
Mateo: Yeah, absolutely.
So, um, Keen to Help.
we make it easy to help your community.
So, we've worked with a few different groups, but we narrowed in on companies
and helping you plan the ideal corporate event for your employees.
So, helping you get engaged with different causes and different activities
that you can do together as a team, that's going to enable you to give
back to the community and also have a great time doing it, basically.
RaphaÃ«l: Awesome.
That's, uh, that's super cool.
And how did you get to this point in your life, your career?
Like what, what led you to start this company?
Mateo: Yeah, absolutely.
So, I mean, it was during the pandemic, me and a few friends not
having much to do over the summer.
And we said, hey, why not, build a volunteer website?
And that's where I met my co founder, Alex, who helped us basically build
out our directory of different organizations you could volunteer with.
And what started out as initial, like a side project, when we started working with
different high schools to help students fulfill their graduation requirements.
That's when we started, like, licensing an actual product and turning it into,
like, from a side project into a company.
And from schools, we've now, we've helped basically, like, over a dozen schools and
more than 2, 000 students, um, volunteer.
And, um, are now trying to take what we less like, what we learned with the school
environment and applying it to different, um, companies across Canada and the U.
S.
RaphaÃ«l: cool.
So do I understand correctly that when you first started to do this, it was
just like a, kind of like a side project?
Yeah,
Mateo: of boredom and like me having an internship and all summer plans lined
up and having everything just go to zero, like during lockdown, everything
getting canceled and being like, Oh, wow.
Okay.
What am I, what am I going to do with my summer now?
Like, how can I be productive?
And yeah, I'm glad it turned into that and didn't end up
with me just like being lazy.
Not doing anything, you know, I guess.
RaphaÃ«l: yeah, totally.
Um, with that in mind, I'm kind of curious, like, what, what did you,
like, how do you manage that transition from like, Oh, this is just like
a side project that I'm doing to.
Oh, like, let's turn this into a company.
Let's turn it into a real product.
Mateo: Yeah, that's a, that's an excellent question.
I think number one thing is like delusion, especially at that age of being like,
Oh, like I can actually make this huge company that's gonna like connect
millions and millions of volunteers and holding on to that vision for dear life.
I think over the years now I've realized like what it actually takes and, um,
more of the challenge now that I didn't realize at the beginning, which is like,
Kind of gave me that ignorance to really just say, okay, go, like, I'll go for it.
Um, but I think more than that, it's like the support of the people around
me, whether that's my family and friends that like give me the confidence to
then know that if I, if I fail, and even if I've like put like multiple
years now into it, and that doesn't work, that I'm not going to be like.
Viewed as a, as failure.
Cause I know that my friends and my family will still support
me no matter what, I guess.
RaphaÃ«l: That's, yeah, I feel like that's so key, like
having a strong support system.
Uh, so yeah.
Awesome to hear that you have that.
Um, I'm kind of curious though, with that question in mind, like, did you,
as you transitioned from like project to company and you have this support
system and this network, did you also actively go out and like seek, I don't
know, like startup communities or other, like did you build out that network
beyond what you had when you got started?
And if so, like how, like what places do you go to?
Like how did you make that happen?
Mateo: Yeah, for sure.
Well, so I got really lucky.
Well, um, being like at McGill, they have their Dobson entrepreneurship
center where we were able to do a pitch competition and we earned about
like $15,000 um, to really start going from this product from a business.
So that was, a huge help, um, but what I would recommend even beyond just like
different programs that you may or may not have available to you is the network
that you're going to be building out.
Like, um, there's so many resources that I would have never known without talking
to someone who had been through what I had been through, recommending me those
exact resources, whether it was government funding to help us get off the ground.
Um, it's going to be different for your, your journey.
So just finding people on LinkedIn that have been through or that you aspire to,
that you look up to that you want to have a career like that, really reaching out
and asking okay, How did you do this?
Where did you get the money?
How did you set up your sales?
All of that.
It's very likely they have all the answers to the questions,
um, that you're looking for.
So, getting out of your comfort zone and doing that research to see who
you want to end up like, and then just asking them the right questions, um, I
think is the The best is more important than any, any individual program
that you're going to be able to find.
RaphaÃ«l: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Um, I'm curious, how does, uh Like, how does finding a co founder,
so you've got a co founder, Alex, and how did you meet him?
How did you two decide, like, yeah, let's do this together?
Like how did that all work?
Mateo: So it was really off of, uh, like a coffee chat, like a virtual
30 minute meeting where we'd been connected through like, uh, this other
internship I did, and he was like the, the big tech guy, like the VP
engineering , at another software company.
And I just had 30 minutes with him, but I asked him, okay, like, Let's
say, hypothetically, you were to build or launch a website, like, what
would you, how would you do that?
Like, what if it is something that I wanted to do?
And you said, okay, like, I recommend you do this, this, and this.
And then, so, I went back, and me and my friends that were all students at
the time, we, um, we kind of, like, cobbled together a website following
exactly what he said, like, using WordPress, a combination of different
plugins, without needing to know any software, like writing no code.
And having done exactly what you said, like six months later, I reached back
out and I was super excited to like show him what we'd been working on.
And he was, he was thrilled.
He wanted to be more involved.
And, uh, that's how ultimately he came on board as a co founder
after like multiple calls.
But like showing that we took his advice seriously and that we valued his, uh, his
opinion and that we wanted more of it.
I think.
It like, it showed that we were really more interested in having him on board as
opposed to just, just talking about it.
So I think that made.
Things a lot easier.
And, um, I would highly recommend finding a co founder.
It's going to be a lot more difficult, um, alone.
So I'm so grateful that that had happened.
RaphaÃ«l: That's awesome.
Yeah, that's super cool.
Um, you bring up, uh, WordPress I'm kind of curious, Did you have any
experience doing any sort of tech, like building anything tech related?
Had you ever used even like those kinds of tools, like a WordPress, uh, with a
plugin or yeah, anything like that before?
No nothing, like zero at all
Mateo: all.
Like I had no coding background whatsoever.
And so taking on that challenge, I mean, it was very lengthy and a
learning process, but I mean, It wasn't really that hard, I don't think.
Like, anyone can do
it, highly likely, you just have to get over that hump and be like,
okay, I'm going to become a computer engineer, even if you don't have any
of those skills, maybe not to that level, but that wasn't even needed.
For what we were doing.
So that kind of worked out.
RaphaÃ«l: Cool.
Can you walk me through a little bit, like, how do you
actually operate this platform?
I don't know, the different tools, whether it is WordPress and the plugins,
are there other things that you use?
Like, how does it all, how does it all work?
Mateo: Yeah, definitely.
Um, so it's very, I don't know if it's like the best way to go about
it, but it's very like reactive.
So like we started off the most basic setup, most basic features,
just a very simple directory with like profiles and nonprofits.
And it's only when we like talk to schools or different companies now, um, where
they tell us, Hey, can this do this?
Like, can you, can we have this feature and blah, blah, blah,
And that's when we just Google search.
Okay.
Like what's the best way to like incorporate that or add this new feature.
And very often it's just as simple as adding like a new plugin.
And so it's kind of like a Frankenstein to get a solution, but it's primarily
driven by the customers and our conversations with them that then
tell us, okay, let's build this in.
Because so many of the features that we, that we had, um, even
customers will tell us themselves, Hey, this is really important.
Like I want this before I'm going to move forward, um, with the contract.
And then even if we add it in, they're not even going to use it sometimes.
So I think there's so many, like it's easy to get lost in over engineering,
like putting too much into a product development, if it's not going to be
something that's really needed, like make sure it's really, really important before
spending all that time to build that out.
RaphaÃ«l: I love that.
I feel like I see that so much where there's like, you know, someone will
spend a ton of developer hours trying to build something super custom and it's
like, well, you could have done that.
I should have tested this maybe, like, without building it, um, from scratch.
Yeah.
Mateo: For sure.
Now we're also guilty of that.
So it was a lesson learned the hard way sometimes, but
no, definitely very important.
RaphaÃ«l: Cool.
Do you have any tips in terms of customer discovery, actually figuring
out, like who needs this, like why they might want this feature or, you know,
like, those kinds of conversations, like, how do you approach that?
Mateo: There's no way of knowing until like you test it and you make so many
assumptions where you're like for example, we thought, okay, like the companies
that are going to be the most social impact driven, that are going to mention
social impact on the websites the most, that's going to be our target audience.
When in reality, it was the companies that had some care about it, but
it wasn't their primary focus.
So it was more like, we worked with like a, a semiconductor manufacturing company
that said, Hey, we actually do nothing for social impact, but we want to get started.
can you help us set that up for you?
And so it completely made us question our initial strategy and made us.
Make a pivot and say, okay, maybe this is going to be the better audience for
us.
Um, but you're not going to know that without sending your first 5,000 or
maybe even 10,000 emails to really test those percentages because yeah, there's
so much more to be learned, I think, by testing and just seeing what happens
as opposed to just thinking about it.
RaphaÃ«l: Yeah.
When you talk about like sending out those like thousands of emails, how
do you manage that sort of thing?
Like, are you crafting messages like per organization or are you doing a bunch
of cold emailing just to first like get something in before you start, I don't
know, building up a relationship or yeah.
How do you do all of that?
Mateo: From my experience and how we went about it is like starting off very
cold and then iterating over time to get better, based on the, whether it's reply
rates, so doing a lot of A B testing.
Understanding, just like testing it out.
Obviously at the beginning we got a lot more, like whether it was like unsubscribe
rates or angry email responses, like why did you email me three times.
And I did feel bad about it at first, but we use those as like kind of guinea pigs
to understand, okay, what was, what not.
Working and what wasn't working
and
as tough as it might be.
That's just how we were able to learn quickly is by just testing that,
but you can always iterate later.
And now I think we're at a much better place than we are.
And maybe in a couple of years, it will be even better, but yeah,
definitely growing pains along the way.
RaphaÃ«l: Yep.
I was talking to someone, a few months ago who kind of
had that, that sort of story.
He was kind of like, you know what, it feels a little awkward, those cold emails.
But he was like, once we started like really increasing the volume
and sort of not caring too much about people being angry about the, the
amount of stuff they were receiving, it just helped them out so much.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Mateo: No definitely.
And there's a way to do also respectfully.
Like if they ask you to take you off their list, like obviously
you can easily comply with that.
You can make it easy for them to unsubscribe.
So, um, as long as you do it.
In a respectful way, I think, um, it's naturally understood
that it's, um, part of the way to reach out and build new contacts.
RaphaÃ«l: Yeah, totally.
I love, I love the way you, you frame these things where it's like,
you know, you have to do the thing.
We understand, like, that we're all in this ecosystem trying to build
stuff together, but as long as you do it respectfully, um, you think about,
like, the person that you're reaching out to and it should all work out.
Mateo: No, definitely.
And there's always, you'll always be on both sides of things.
Like even myself, I'll get a bunch of emails and, before I might, now I kind
of understand more why they're doing it.
And so it doesn't bother me as much.
I'm like, okay, they're just trying to get the word out, like sell their products.
So, yeah, I guess part of the business.
RaphaÃ«l: Yeah, so you've got like different stakeholders, right?
Like you've got the nonprofits that you're trying to help, the
companies who are participating.
You used to do schools.
Tell me about how you manage those different stakeholders
and the transition between them.
Like you went from schools to now companies.
How did that all work?
Sorry.
I feel like that was a lot, but
Mateo: No, yeah, I mean the first transition, well, schools, um, the biggest
mistake we made was we took what was working with schools and then we tried
to copy and paste that for companies and that did not work very well at all.
At least, at the beginning.
That was, it was almost, we thought we had one product that was going
to work with for two markets.
But it ended up being over time as we iterated and like changed our pitch,
changed the pricing and everything, like two completely separate, separate
models and even separate businesses.
And I think with the schools, it's really more software based.
What we ended up developing was a way for students to be able to
log, track their hours and sign up for volunteer opportunities.
For the companies, what we saw the biggest gap is that a lot of them had
either their own software or their own way of tracking those hours, but they
needed the volunteer opportunities.
And so that's when we worked with nonprofits to co create.
Basically new volunteer opportunities that employees can do like at their
office, because we saw, like both volunteer rates and donation rates.
And that's largely also due to the pandemic.
We're just not spending as much time outside as we used to.
And even donors, donor rates have been falling both in the US and Canada.
So it's a new way that we've developed for employees at these companies to
be really involved in the cause of the nonprofit, where they're going
to be creating something of value.
That we can then donate to the nonprofit that's going to be getting them really
that excited feeling, uh, the good feeling associated with giving back, which we try
to create for as many people as possible.
RaphaÃ«l: Yeah.
So actually, because I feel like we haven't really dug into this a whole lot.
So what are the mechanics of like the experience that you provide?
So you have boxes, if I understand correctly, and those go out and
people do something and then it comes back ready for a nonprofit.
Something along those lines, right?
So can you tell me, uh, A, you can clean that, clean up that, that explanation,
uh, to the extent that it needs to be.
Um, but, uh, also just how did you come up with the specifics
of like how this, this works and how do you, how do you manage it?
Like how do you manage who needs what, how you package it, deliver it, like
the, the operations of, of all of this.
Mateo: Yeah.
No, absolutely.
So, um, when we started out basically getting employees say, Hey, we want you
guys to volunteer as a team, getting you out in the community, well, the response
we got from a lot of nonprofits We're like actually getting a half, like a team of
employees just for a half day, like once a month, isn't going to be that beneficial,
um, to our cause and to our mission, because it's just inefficient to have
to train these employees, like find easy tasks that they can do without getting
them involved, um, on a longer term basis.
Whereas, um, companies, they really wanted to do just that half day of volunteering.
So it was kind of an imbalance of what companies wanted and
what would work for nonprofits.
And so to try to balance that out we worked with nonprofits to say, Hey, what
are some things that could be useful that they could, they could do basically.
And a lot of them do accept or need in kind donations of different
things, depending on different times throughout the year.
So, like, for example, Toys for Tots, they do a huge, like, toy
collection around the holidays and are in need of, like, thousands
and thousands of toys to be made.
And so, what companies can do is, through our, like, our volunteer kits,
um, that we send all the materials that they need to do the volunteer
activity, um, at their office.
At their own pace to then create those items of value.
For example, can be Lego kits or with back school around the corner, or like
doing backpack stuffing activities, that they like complete the items with
their personal touch that they can send back to be donated to non-profits so
it's really trying to balance because we have a two sided marketplace, finding
something that's going to work for both sides was kind of the the idea
behind it, but that was definitely no straight road to get there.
RaphaÃ«l: So how do you manage all of the stuff?
I feel like whenever I think about businesses that have to handle like
inventory of some kind, and I started thinking about like warehousing, whether
that means like your apartment or an actual warehouse or like an office space.
Like, how do you, how do you handle all of that?
Mateo: No, yeah.
So, um, a lot of it is just like in my room right now,
if I show you like up here.
I like boxes everywhere.
That's like a small pet habitat that we have to show off.
So I bought like a bunch of boxes here, to do all the shipping that
I'm hoping is a temporary solution.
But I realized, like, a lot of it is, like, You have to like do yourself
and just to learn how to do it.
And so Alex also has a bunch of boxes at his place, but obviously
the dream is going to be one day to like work with a shipping partner,
like have our own warehouse, but as long as the demand isn't.
Isn't there?
Um, we're also learning how to do it right by doing it ourselves before
we can offload it and have like other people support us with that process.
So it does give us.
A lot more control, in the meantime.
So if you can do it yourself before working with someone else I would
definitely advise going that route.
RaphaÃ«l: Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense.
Does that all tie in with like, so you get someone comes into the platform they
pay directly on the website and then you have like a system where you like
see, okay, like this is what's come in.
Like we got to pack up these boxes and you ship it out.
Is that basically the flow.
Mateo: Yeah, exactly.
So, um, they just placed an order and now it's directly through our website.
With our new website, we're releasing launch to make the
logistics easier with Shopify, it's basically just an e commerce store.
And so those are for the on site, like, volunteering activities that
we ship out, we also have a full database of volunteer opportunities
you can do directly with a non profit.
For the ones that do accept employees.
So, there are a lot of different options based on what you're looking for,
because whether you're volunteering with OneRightKids or directly with a nonprofit
really the goal is to get as many people getting back to the community as possible.
RaphaÃ«l: Super cool.
Nice.
I'm kind of curious then, like, what are, what are your next steps looking like?
What's, uh, what's coming up?
Mateo: Yeah, that's a great question.
I know we've been like very focused like in the short term and so I
haven't done, I don't know the stuff.
The right way to do it, but like the medium to long term planning, we just
like really spend a lot of time and say, okay, let's try to make this
like work as best as possible and see like how many of the volunteer
kids can we send out to the community.
As far as that, I mean, we have a lot of like lofty ideals, I think the
number one thing that would be really cool to do would be to, once we have
like different clients set up to create more long term partnerships
between nonprofits and companies.
So once employees like get a positive feeling of, okay, that was really
fun to give back for a half day.
What can we do that's going to be more impactful as opposed to maybe just like
creating and donating like 12 Lego sets?
What if we volunteered once a week over the course of a month to create
a new home or to do a clothing drive, to donate a lot of clothes?
Like there are so many more opportunities to create a deeper impact if we're
able to strengthen the connection with nonprofits and companies.
I think that would be the long term vision once we're able to, I
guess, get our feet off the ground,
RaphaÃ«l: That's super cool.
Yeah, I hadn't thought of it that way, but it is like, it's almost like what
you're providing is like dipping your toe into the water and then sort of
getting comfortable and then there's this opportunity after that to really dig in.
So
Mateo: right?
Like for now, it's just trying to make it as easy as possible.
so anyone can get involved, but ideally we'd be like more
advancing, the impact as we go on.
And once they, we can build that, that trust,
RaphaÃ«l: Super
cool.
Um, yeah.
And I guess, We are on the small tech podcast.
So I am curious, what is the, uh, the small tech product that you'd
like to plug, uh, who do you want to shout out for this episode?
Mateo: Yeah, absolutely.
I want to shout out BuddyBoss, the plugin that we basically use to set up
our like school volunteering software that really helped us go from like
from zero features to a hundred because they just have so many different ways
you can create an online community.
It can be for any idea, really that you're looking for to get
like users onto a platform.
So I would highly recommend you checking them out, they're
also a fellow Canadian company,
RaphaÃ«l: I
didn't know
that.
Mateo: So, highly, highly recommend if you're looking to start out with a SaaS
product with different, different users.
RaphaÃ«l: Super cool.
Awesome.
Thanks, Mateo.
Mateo: Yeah,
absolutely.
RaphaÃ«l: And yeah, this is a, this is a great chat.
So, uh, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and I hope to see Keen
to Help grow massively and start, uh, start or keep, keep helping
people volunteer and get those people volunteering once a week instead of
just dipping their toes in the water.
I'm looking
Mateo: No, absolutely.
I really appreciate that and the opportunity to be here and say,
like, a little bit more about us.
So, no, it's been, uh, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you so much.
RaphaÃ«l: Awesome.
Cool.
Thanks.
See ya.
Mateo: Thank you.
Take care.
Outro: Folks.
That was my conversation with Mateo Jeanneau of Keen to Help.
I had a blast chatting with him, and I learned so much.
It's always inspiring to see how people are using technology to make
a real difference in the world.
If you work with a nonprofit or a company that could use their product, their
platform, you should definitely reach out.
We'll put some links in the show notes.
But if you want to check them out right away, it's keen to help.com.
That's all words.
K E E N T O H E L P .com.
If you're enjoying the podcast and haven't subscribed yet, you can find
us at sustainabletechpodcast.com.
Subscribe in your podcast app of choice.
And don't forget to check us out on YouTube, and hit the
subscribe button there as well.
If you like the work that we're doing, we would really appreciate a
rating review, et cetera, on whatever platform you use to listen to us.
Give us some feedback.
We'd really appreciate it.
And if you're building a small tech product that is having a
positive impact on the world.
I'd love to talk to you as well.
It's always fun to see what people are building out there.
In the meantime, we all want to do something good in the world.
So go out there and build something.
Good, folks.
I'll see you in the next one.
See