# HigherMe

The comprehensive solution for hiring hourly employees

## Elevator pitch
In the retail and restaurant industries, yearly employee turnover rates are incredible, sometimes as high as 100%. In these low-margin businesses, turnover is the silent killer of profitability. We make it easy for hourly employers to find, screen, and interview applicants through text-to-apply software, mobile functionality, and video resumes. This connects quality candidates to the right jobs quickly, saving both employers and applicants thousands of dollars and hours a year. 

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/higher.me
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:23182
- Last updated: 2026-07-10T05:00:13Z
- Generated at: 2026-07-10T10:24:25Z

## Quick facts
- Earning close to $1.6 million in annual recurring revenue.
- Have partnerships with well-known brands like McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, Domino's, Panera, Burger King, and more.
- Monthly recurring revenue has grown from $30k in August 2016 to $135k in April 2018.
- Our customer lifetime value, $19,917, is more than 6X our customer acquisition cost of $3,154.
- We've received more than 1,000,000 job applications and gotten over 100,000 people hired in 43 states.
- Candidate volume has grown 350% in the last 12 months.
- The current economic cost of service sector employment is $219 billion (50 million workers x 73% turnover x $6,000+ / hire = $219 billion).
- 85% of job candidates that start our application will finish it.  This is 2X-3X higher than most other systems.

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:16791: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## FAQ
1. **Hi - You have a fantastic product with great traction. A few questions: 1. If customers pay a monthly subscription fee, how are workers paid? Does the customer negotiate directly with the potential hire? 2. You state your currently monthly recurring revenue is $135K. How truly...**
   - Hey Jeff, thanks for some great questions! #1 - We are really first and foremast a software product - so the employment relationship today is very much between the worker and the employer. At least in our initial beachhead industry of retail & restaurants/franchises, the vast majority of workers are W-2 employees, either part-time or full-time. So they have a direct employment relationship with our customer, the employer. #2 - Many of our customers are on quarterly, semi-annual, or annual...
2. **BTW - I could not find the HigherMe funding page on the Wefunder Explore page. I also searched for "HigherMe" and nothing.**
   - I believe the profile is still in "private mode" before launching publicly, so it can only be accessed by folks with the direct link.
3. **People are the single most important resource. But selecting the right people is notoriously difficult. A tool that helps managers select good people has tremendous value. How does HigherMe help managers select people with the personal characteristics necessary to be efficient...**
   - Hey Michael! We work individually with each new customer to come up with a specific set of assessments that candidates engage with as part of the application process, to better identify who's likely to be a fit. We also let candidates record a short video cover letter so that employers can get a better sense for the candidate's personality - having a bright, cheerful personality is hugely important in these industries. For larger clients, we can also actually do an exhaustive deep dive on his...
4. **Hi, Interesting offering for sure. I see the mention of future state including machine learning / AI - what are you thinking there? I ask in part because machine learning requires a massive data set for the best results, and in another question you mention that the qualificati...**
   - Todd, great question - I have a bit of a background in data science myself, so I appreciate the question. This industry, to me, is one big data science problem - but it's the perfect industry for it because of the size of the data set. To give you a sense - our biggest client, a national brand that you've heard of, hires 8,000 people for *one job title* every year, and receives over 100,000+ job applications for that role annually - it's not like the white collar world where hiring is more ad...
5. **Your idea sounds great but as with many other startup cash burn is huge risk. Your SEC doc showed cash at $376k (down from $631k previous year) and net loss of $1 million. 1. What is your monthly cash burn? When do you project to achieve neutral/positive cash flow? 2. Are you ...**
   - Hi Joo, Great questions - I'm glad you asked. We have been fanatical about managing cash in this company. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Paul Graham, the founder of YC, but he wrote a great article called "Default Alive or Default Dead" that talks at length about managing cash & burn - http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html - we very much follow this mantra in deciding where to spend money. As a recurring revenue business, the vast majority of our costs come upfront, before we acquire ...

## Team
- Eric Bouchard (Director of Sales / Senior Account Executive)
- Cindy Wang (Client Service / Operations / Marketing)
- Jeff Keeling (Front-End Development Team Lead)
- Derek Williamson (Product & Growth)
- Kathleen McDonough (Account Executive)
- Steph Morgan (Chief Revenue Officer)
- Rob Hunter (Founder / CEO)
- Jean-François Chedeville (Co-founder / CTO)

## Q&A
- Q: Do you intend to pay a dividend?
  - A: Hi Craig, we don't - the company is largely valued on its annual recurring revenue, and we have very clear channels through which to deploy additional capital to increase that revenue - so paying a dividend has a huge opportunity cost for us.As a software company, we will ultimately be acquired based on the growth rate of our revenue, so paying out a dividend rather than re-investing into proven customer acquisition channels just doesn't make sense for us.Best,Rob
- Q: Where can I find the financial statements? I didn't find them in the Form C link page below. Thanks
- Q: You guys still in Business? I haven't seen an update since 2018 annual report
  - A: Hi Darron!  We don't post anything publicly - feel free to email derek@higherme.com to get added to the list; we send out a report every month.​​​
- Q: Ok so if you guys are still in business please let me know. Haven’t seen an update in awhile. I saw you had $1.1 mil in salaries and lost $900k. Kind of surprised with only $1 mil in revenue. Cost of goods sold was $400k and not sure but was that commissions paid. Do you have a business update?
  - A: Hi Frank - as mentioned in a previous post on here, we send out monthly updates privately by email.  Please email derek@higherme.com if you'd like to be added to the list.  I'm sure he could share the last several months' worth of updates with you if you'd like.​
- Q: How do I get 2018 K1
  - A: Hi Jerry - it's my understanding that K1's are only associated with LLC and S-Corp's.  As a Delaware C-corp, we do not produce them.  Might want to check with WeFunder directly as there may be a different setup given the nature of the crowdfunding investment.
- Q: What are your margins?
  - A: Hi Craig - we enjoy typical SaaS gross margins.  Typically:- 2% on credit card processing- 3-5% on software infrastructure- 5%+ on variable client supportPutting gross margins just shy of 90%
- Q: Do you guys have a app or plan on getting one?
  - A: Hey Nick - an employer facing app is definitely on the near-term roadmap, but we've made a pretty intentional decision NOT to go native mobile for candidates.We've seen a few companies crash and burn trying that strategy, because forcing a candidate to download an app ends up being a ton of friction - they have to go to to the app store, search for the app, download the app, put in their Apple password, wait for the app to download, register for an account, etc. etc.Having an app KILLS your application throughput/conversation rate, and since our whole focus is on optimizing every step in the hiring funnel, we will not be offering an app for candidates - instead, we focus on mobile-friendly features & heavy text-messaging integrations, at every step in the hiring funnel.
- Q: Allen Erickson I have been watching HigherMe for the latr 2 months. I am interested in this company. Do you have any updates of progress since April. Is the MRR still growing at a fantastic rate and has the candidate flow also increased. Thanks
  - A: Hey Allen, great to connect!  MRR still growing quickly as we are just passing the $165,000 mark.  No guarantees but we anticipate crossing $200,000 MRR before the end of the year as we have a lot of good pipeline.Candidate flow remains strong, despite 50 year lows in unemployment - would be happy to discuss specifics by email (rob@higherme.com)​
- Q: Hello when does your fundraiser end?
  - A: Hi Timothy - the official end date is October 17.  We may choose to end earlier than that, depending on how quickly our Series A fundraising progresses.
- Q: i saw in one of your last answers to a question that the next round would be in preferred equity so then what's the upside just the dividends lol?
  - A: Hey Nick! Apologies, was on the road for most of the week and just saw this. I'm not sure I understand your question? 99% of startups raising a priced round do so with preferred equity. The upside is that if the value of the company increases, and it's acquired (or IPO's) for more than the valuation cap, then you end up making a return. The downside protection of preferred equity is that it typically includes a liquidation preference - most often 1.0 - meaning that you get 100% of your money back before common shareholders receive anything. The SAFE - the instrument used for our WeFunder campaign - also has that benefit, and automatically converts to preferred equity if and when we raised a priced round. You may be confusing this with dividend-bearing preferred equity in the public markets? That's a completely different animal than preferred equity in venture capital. Lots of good resources on the WeFunder website to learn more about the differences, but I'm happy to answer any additional questions you may have. Best, Rob
- Q: Hi Rob, 1) I still can't understand the process exactly. Can you please take me through process, from the candidate perspective. First they see an add that says text "Keyword" to XXX-XXX-XXXX and then the candidate text the number, and then what happens? please be detailed. 2) What is the difference between your solution and Snagajob.com? Thanks, Majed
  - A: Hi Majed, 1) We serve as the hiring system of record for our customers. We are their job application. We are their screening system. We are their applicant tracking system. To work at one of our customer's locations, we power that entire process. The candidate fills out an online job application and then can be selected for an interview by the manager. While the customer is responsible for sourcing the candidate, this is an area we help out with through: a) Our text-to-apply feature, which you've described b) Providing our employers with a careers page they can link to from their website & social media c) Integrations with various job boards, eg. Indeed Hope that makes sense, let me know if you have additional questions! 2) Snagajob is first and foremost a job board. We are not a job board. We are a full-cycle recruiting platform that optimizes and improves every step in the hiring funnel. Snag has tried to branch outside of sourcing candidates but has never found tremendous success. Right now, they're in the middle of a very drastic pivot to on-demand "Snagawork", which is sort of like Uber for hourly workers. This is a market we're very bearish on and not something we plan on getting into.
- Q: Please discuss MRR and candidate growth through 2Q18.
  - A: Hi Howard, apologies for the delay - was in transit for much of the last several days. We ended Q1 at approximately $105,000 in monthly recurring revenue and finished Q2 at approximately $145,000 in monthly recurring revenue. We're hopeful of hitting $167,000 in monthly recurring revenue ($2M ARR) by the end of Q3. There are several ways to think about candidate growth, but one metric is the number of applications started in a given month. At the end of Q1, there were approximately 54,000 applications started in the previous 30 days. At the end of Q2, there were approximately 85,000 applications started in the previous 30 days. We're hopeful of surpassing the 100,000/month mark by the end of Q3, although this number is subject to a lot of other variables (seasonality, labor market dynamics, etc.) outside of our control. Please contact me privately if you'd like any additional details. Best, Rob
- Q: When do you anticipate closing this round? And are you raising capital outside of Wefunder as well?
  - A: Hi Howard, good morning - apologies for the delay. We will be closing the round in the next several weeks and proceeding with efforts to raise a Series A from institutional investors in the fall. Best, Rob
- Q: Where are you attracting the applicants from? Are you relying solely on your website and the brick and mortar locations of your current clients, or do you actively use other sources to attract applicants to create profiles that can be used for some of the offerings you have for your clients? For example, a lot of tracking systems like you have mentioned rely heavily on attracting applicants from places like Indeed or Google, but if flow is down from these sources, what other forms of attraction are you creating to make sure the candidate flow lives up to the promise you are making to clients?
  - A: Hey Steven, this is a great question. The primary reason that employers choose to work with us centers around process improvement - not necessarily candidate flow. Here are some examples of why our customers work with us: - using our dashboard to manage their hiring process and stay organized - increasing the number of candidates that actually submit an application by using our mobile-friendly job application w/industry-leading completion/throughput rates - reducing interview no-shows and increasing response time with our interview scheduling - screening for great personalities with our video cover letter feature - using our predictive analytics to better determine who is likely to be a fit in the role, reducing turnover - saving time and money by digitizing the paperwork/onboarding experience post-hire All that being said, we actively think a lot about how to increase candidate flow in non-traditional (eg. Indeed, Google ways). We have a few ideas that I'd prefer to not discuss publicly. Shoot me an email and I'd be happy to get into more detail.
- Q: Security breaches are becoming more common and given that you are handling personal data, are you a subject of any regulations/standards? What controls do you have in place (or plan) to ensure access control and limit the blast radius in case of unauthorized access due to bugs or breaches?
  - A: Hey Alex, great to hear from you. We use AWS, which does offer a lot of infrastructure security. Our database is only accessible from our server IP and you can only access this server with a specific SSH key. On top of that, all the critical information is encrypted through AES encryption. We also use a special third-party service to manage the most critical data, eg. SSN numbers. Happy to connect you with our engineering team if you need a more substantive answer than that.