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When I announced the launch of 70 Million Jobs on HN back in 2017, it proved to be one of the most widely read and discussed posts ever on the site. I was total

When I announced the launch of 70 Million Jobs on HN back in 2017, it proved to be one of the most widely read and discussed posts ever on the site. I was totally blown away. Once again, I am struck by the incredibly sensitive and supportive tenor of the reactions to my news here. For some context, besides having a criminal record, I was/am a solo founder who somehow talked his way into Y Comb. Perhaps most surprising is my age: I'm 68. To my friends I grew up with, I'm f'-ing Steve Jobs. To you guys, you'd no doubt see me as the bumbling great uncle at Thanksgiving that isn't allowed to touch the TV remote control. So it's all been pretty weird. (wanna see it get weirder? google me and check out my past) As you all know, doing a 2-sided marketplace is always tough. But imagine if neither side of your marketplace was convinced they wanted your product. Chances are you keep your distance from such an undertaking ("Build something people want," my YC t-shirt says). I build something arguably no one wanted, but I knew they needed. Does that make me a schmuck? Probably. But to those who've never gotten close to someone with as record--particularly someone with a different color than you, who was brought into an unfair world from Day One, someone who wanted the same things as you, but never quite figured out how to get there, I'm here to say that some of these folks are the most honorable, humble, appreciate, hard-working people you could imagine. They just want a peaceful life, to take care of their family and get a good night sleep. So that's where the mission comes in, and that's when zealots are born. The truth is, I have nothing in my life other than my work. No wife, no kids, no home, nothing. But the satisfaction I got from helping these heroic folks, and the smiles I'd see on their kids' faces when they were reunited, meant/means the world to me. If you don't have something like this in your life, I urge you to find it. Your karma will thank you for it. I invite you all to ask your questions and continue to opine. If you have something to share that isn't merely an attempt to win an argument, I'd appreciate your taking the time to email me. More importantly, if you're ever in a position to hire someone with a record, take the chance. Life is too short not to take chances. Richard

agsamek 4y ago
Richard, could you elaborate on the number one question in the comments - what do you mean by the great resignation and how specifically this affected you and the people using your service to find jobs?
- itake 4y ago
  He responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600686
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    What really rubs me the wrong way is the tone in his original post, which sounds remarkably like a boomer complaining 'people didn't want to work and it screwed us do-gooders over' In his follow-up comment it really sounds like their jobs were either shit or the compensation wasn't good enough. Lots of companies paid their workers well and didn't have retention issues, but the 'big boys' just treat labor as disposable.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Sosh101 4y ago
      Can we dispense with these ageist stereotypes here please?
    - z3ncyberpunk 4y ago
      Millennial naivety
gremlinsinc 4y ago
This sounds awesome, I want to do something similar, only with housing for people with bad credit, or records, or anything really that makes keeping housing rough. My grand idea is creating an intentional community with some glamping areas for cashflow, a community garden, shared tools and worker space with 3d printers, recreational vehicles, brooms, rakes, etc...things you really don't need to 'own', and cut back on too much consumerism. The idea being if you had 2 city blocks and everyone was related or at least friendly and built a huge garage to share items they maybe use infrequently, how much space would that free up for more people to live, or to work on a hobby or something? My idea is build a homestead, in an area where zoning and building codes allow, maybe use some earth-friendly building methods like earth bag homes, there's an awesome youtube channel called My Little Homestead where they basically built free standing buildings as 'rooms' for each of their kids and it's basically like their own studio apartment. Each one cost < 10k, and is something you can live in any time of year. If you could build like 50 of these things, you could maybe house 50-100+ people and maybe just charge like 300/person 100 per child, and build bigger buildings as needed for larger families, etc. Rinse and repeat across the USA and bring rent and home prices down because you'd flood the market with cheap homes anyone can afford. The glamping section might have 5-10 spots each bringing in 50-200 per night throughout the year. The community would be gated, and protected well, and work best probably for those who could work online or from home, or willing to commute as it'll probably be in a rural area. They might not even be places you'd want to stay in forever, but great starter homes to live in while you save up money for something bigger or build up some investments or passive income sources. Alternate to earth bags, we also could use tiny-homes which are roughly 50k per pop, possibly less if we manufacture them from kits. I just have no idea how or where to begin to launch something like this, or if the brilliance is just in my own head, or if people/communities would actually find it valuable.
- jupp0r 4y ago
  Isn't this basically a trailer park?
- prawn 4y ago
  A friend is working on tiny housing for homeless. There is a premium tier of the tiny houses that I think helps to fundraise for the Calyx pods. https://foragebuilt.com.au/ https://foragebuilt.com.au/ But I think ultimately you’d be building a trailer park for the more troubled parts of society and that might cause it to be less idyllic than you envisage. I’ve previously done some marketing work for an apartment building that focuses on mixing previously homeless in with other tenants plus support services on site.
clairity 4y ago
been there, can commiserate. i had to shut down my startup in a similar space a few years ago after we failed to round out our post-seed raise. literally had to let everyone go one day, then my co-founder left, and then, packing boxes and walking out the door for the last time. it sucks, no two ways about it. hope you can find the next thing quickly.
codeenlightener 4y ago
What are the operational costs of 70MR? What prevents you from scaling to zero employees?
- sbarre 4y ago
  If I had to guess, account people who can work with employers and future employees to get deals done once the platform does initial matchmaking. Not everything, particularly employment, can be self-serve through a website.
- xeromal 4y ago
  I bet the majority of their operating budget is people who drum up the contracts/relationships with these companies. It's one of the biggest things you can't automate and there's a certain kind of person that fits this role. These people reach out to companies, find out if they need work and would be ok with these kind of employees and then they have to work out an agreement. It's very personal and very human.
- RBBronson123 4y ago
  As explained elsewhere, our staffing business was by far our best product line. Staffing is a notoriously people-hungry enterprise. They're required to sell large employers, nationally, to handle the logistics, to drive job-seeker acquisition, and much more. This is not a pure tech undertaking.
ManuelKiessling 4y ago
This might really be a stupid question and I can imagine you have other things to do right now, so zero hard feelings if you don’t answer: But regarding this whole Great Resignation thing, not only in this specific context but in general — there is one thing that I just don’t get: What on earth are these Resignators doing? Where do they go? I mean all those people have to end up SOMEWHERE in the job market, don’t they?
- atentaten 4y ago
  This is a pertinent question that deserves to be answered by anyone who can shed some insight.
- spencerflem 4y ago
  my spitballed guess is that it really is nowhere. anyone out of work for the pandemic and able to survive by living with parents etc. is just still doing that. Why put in 40hr/week when the pay barely even makes rent
- nikanj 4y ago
  My sample size is very small, but they just undo the whole adulthood thing and become children again. Live with parents, eat out of their fridge, hang out with friends and enjoy life
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  Maybe they have to end up somewhere in the job market, later. Maybe they got long Covid and are recovering. Maybe the isolation made them decide they needed to take time to consider what they want in life and to pivot/re-train. Even a small portion of the workforce on each reason to resign work, collectively at the same time, looks indistinguishable from a wave.
- xeromal 4y ago
  People keep asking him this question, but don't realize he's not a university that can figure out why. All he has is data to show that something is happening, not why.
- 4y ago
tomcam 4y ago
Brother, sorry you’re going through this. Thanks for sharing. > I'm here to say that some of these folks are the most honorable, humble, appreciate, hard-working people you could imagine. They just want a peaceful life, to take care of their family and get a good night sleep. Not my experience with many felons. Not trying to be rude here, but how do you tell the food from the bad?
- tomcam 4y ago
  * good from the bad! Argh!
  - not1ofU 4y ago
    The good ones end up in prison, the bad ones run the country or try to buy Twitter /s
thunderbong 4y ago
Nothing to add to the other comments except to wish luck and to say that you're an inspiration. Thank you.
- RBBronson123 4y ago
  ty!
jacquesm 4y ago
If you end up being stuck with that personal debt let me know. I'll be happy to absorb some of it.
- RBBronson123 4y ago
  Thanks for your generosity
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    No, thank you for doing something absolutely amazing. It would be really sad if you ended up holding the bag over and beyond everything that you've already done. I'm terribly sorry to read your message and it pains me not to have any ideas on what can be done to give you enough runway to continue so to help you land it softly is the best that I can think of. Could you please add a publicly visible email to your profile so that it is a bit easier to contact you off-site?
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Well done on what you've achieved. I hope it gets new energy and lives on. At 68 I guess you're not "doing it for the money". A decent soul entrenched in a seemingly impossible battle against socio-political decay is inspiring. As other commenters have said, it isn't just people with criminal records who get marginalised. Members of my family experienced social exclusion due to PTSD following military service. Many vets come back with similar issues as ex-prisoners. What happened to those who served in Vietnam and Korea is shameful. But there are also people who are simply atypical, low IQ, old, queer, disabled, or the wrong skin colour. We have a very, very long way to go to become the society we imagine ourselves to be, one where everyone doesn't just "get by" but prospers, and feels wanted and fulfilled in life. I know it will be unpopular to say here, but amongst all nations the USA seems particularly brutal with regard to its social exclusion, and I think it will only ever be solved from the political level, not bottom-up. At 68 you're still a spring chicken for politics, so I'd go into that if I were you, as a single-issue candidate on "jobs for the marginalised". Judging by the size of the US "excluded population" you'd win a landslide. :)

agsamek 4y ago

Richard, could you elaborate on the number one question in the comments - what do you mean by the great resignation and how specifically this affected you and the people using your service to find jobs?

itake 4y ago
He responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600686
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  What really rubs me the wrong way is the tone in his original post, which sounds remarkably like a boomer complaining 'people didn't want to work and it screwed us do-gooders over' In his follow-up comment it really sounds like their jobs were either shit or the compensation wasn't good enough. Lots of companies paid their workers well and didn't have retention issues, but the 'big boys' just treat labor as disposable.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sosh101 4y ago
    Can we dispense with these ageist stereotypes here please?
  - z3ncyberpunk 4y ago
    Millennial naivety

gremlinsinc 4y ago

This sounds awesome, I want to do something similar, only with housing for people with bad credit, or records, or anything really that makes keeping housing rough. My grand idea is creating an intentional community with some glamping areas for cashflow, a community garden, shared tools and worker space with 3d printers, recreational vehicles, brooms, rakes, etc...things you really don't need to 'own', and cut back on too much consumerism. The idea being if you had 2 city blocks and everyone was related or at least friendly and built a huge garage to share items they maybe use infrequently, how much space would that free up for more people to live, or to work on a hobby or something? My idea is build a homestead, in an area where zoning and building codes allow, maybe use some earth-friendly building methods like earth bag homes, there's an awesome youtube channel called My Little Homestead where they basically built free standing buildings as 'rooms' for each of their kids and it's basically like their own studio apartment. Each one cost < 10k, and is something you can live in any time of year. If you could build like 50 of these things, you could maybe house 50-100+ people and maybe just charge like 300/person 100 per child, and build bigger buildings as needed for larger families, etc. Rinse and repeat across the USA and bring rent and home prices down because you'd flood the market with cheap homes anyone can afford. The glamping section might have 5-10 spots each bringing in 50-200 per night throughout the year. The community would be gated, and protected well, and work best probably for those who could work online or from home, or willing to commute as it'll probably be in a rural area. They might not even be places you'd want to stay in forever, but great starter homes to live in while you save up money for something bigger or build up some investments or passive income sources. Alternate to earth bags, we also could use tiny-homes which are roughly 50k per pop, possibly less if we manufacture them from kits. I just have no idea how or where to begin to launch something like this, or if the brilliance is just in my own head, or if people/communities would actually find it valuable.

jupp0r 4y ago
Isn't this basically a trailer park?
prawn 4y ago
A friend is working on tiny housing for homeless. There is a premium tier of the tiny houses that I think helps to fundraise for the Calyx pods. https://foragebuilt.com.au/ https://foragebuilt.com.au/ But I think ultimately you’d be building a trailer park for the more troubled parts of society and that might cause it to be less idyllic than you envisage. I’ve previously done some marketing work for an apartment building that focuses on mixing previously homeless in with other tenants plus support services on site.

clairity 4y ago

been there, can commiserate. i had to shut down my startup in a similar space a few years ago after we failed to round out our post-seed raise. literally had to let everyone go one day, then my co-founder left, and then, packing boxes and walking out the door for the last time. it sucks, no two ways about it. hope you can find the next thing quickly.

codeenlightener 4y ago

What are the operational costs of 70MR? What prevents you from scaling to zero employees?

sbarre 4y ago
If I had to guess, account people who can work with employers and future employees to get deals done once the platform does initial matchmaking. Not everything, particularly employment, can be self-serve through a website.
xeromal 4y ago
I bet the majority of their operating budget is people who drum up the contracts/relationships with these companies. It's one of the biggest things you can't automate and there's a certain kind of person that fits this role. These people reach out to companies, find out if they need work and would be ok with these kind of employees and then they have to work out an agreement. It's very personal and very human.
RBBronson123 4y ago
As explained elsewhere, our staffing business was by far our best product line. Staffing is a notoriously people-hungry enterprise. They're required to sell large employers, nationally, to handle the logistics, to drive job-seeker acquisition, and much more. This is not a pure tech undertaking.

ManuelKiessling 4y ago

This might really be a stupid question and I can imagine you have other things to do right now, so zero hard feelings if you don’t answer: But regarding this whole Great Resignation thing, not only in this specific context but in general — there is one thing that I just don’t get: What on earth are these Resignators doing? Where do they go? I mean all those people have to end up SOMEWHERE in the job market, don’t they?

atentaten 4y ago
This is a pertinent question that deserves to be answered by anyone who can shed some insight.
spencerflem 4y ago
my spitballed guess is that it really is nowhere. anyone out of work for the pandemic and able to survive by living with parents etc. is just still doing that. Why put in 40hr/week when the pay barely even makes rent
nikanj 4y ago
My sample size is very small, but they just undo the whole adulthood thing and become children again. Live with parents, eat out of their fridge, hang out with friends and enjoy life
SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
Maybe they have to end up somewhere in the job market, later. Maybe they got long Covid and are recovering. Maybe the isolation made them decide they needed to take time to consider what they want in life and to pivot/re-train. Even a small portion of the workforce on each reason to resign work, collectively at the same time, looks indistinguishable from a wave.
xeromal 4y ago
People keep asking him this question, but don't realize he's not a university that can figure out why. All he has is data to show that something is happening, not why.
4y ago

tomcam 4y ago

Brother, sorry you’re going through this. Thanks for sharing. > I'm here to say that some of these folks are the most honorable, humble, appreciate, hard-working people you could imagine. They just want a peaceful life, to take care of their family and get a good night sleep. Not my experience with many felons. Not trying to be rude here, but how do you tell the food from the bad?

tomcam 4y ago
* good from the bad! Argh!
- not1ofU 4y ago
  The good ones end up in prison, the bad ones run the country or try to buy Twitter /s

thunderbong 4y ago

Nothing to add to the other comments except to wish luck and to say that you're an inspiration. Thank you.

RBBronson123 4y ago
ty!

jacquesm 4y ago

If you end up being stuck with that personal debt let me know. I'll be happy to absorb some of it.

RBBronson123 4y ago
Thanks for your generosity
- jacquesm 4y ago
  No, thank you for doing something absolutely amazing. It would be really sad if you ended up holding the bag over and beyond everything that you've already done. I'm terribly sorry to read your message and it pains me not to have any ideas on what can be done to give you enough runway to continue so to help you land it softly is the best that I can think of. Could you please add a publicly visible email to your profile so that it is a bit easier to contact you off-site?

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Well done on what you've achieved. I hope it gets new energy and lives on. At 68 I guess you're not "doing it for the money". A decent soul entrenched in a seemingly impossible battle against socio-political decay is inspiring. As other commenters have said, it isn't just people with criminal records who get marginalised. Members of my family experienced social exclusion due to PTSD following military service. Many vets come back with similar issues as ex-prisoners. What happened to those who served in Vietnam and Korea is shameful. But there are also people who are simply atypical, low IQ, old, queer, disabled, or the wrong skin colour. We have a very, very long way to go to become the society we imagine ourselves to be, one where everyone doesn't just "get by" but prospers, and feels wanted and fulfilled in life. I know it will be unpopular to say here, but amongst all nations the USA seems particularly brutal with regard to its social exclusion, and I think it will only ever be solved from the political level, not bottom-up. At 68 you're still a spring chicken for politics, so I'd go into that if I were you, as a single-issue candidate on "jobs for the marginalised". Judging by the size of the US "excluded population" you'd win a landslide. :)