Heroes in Business - Eric Ly, CoFounder LinkedIN, Founder and CEO KarmaCheck, Hub, Presdo

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

Ch-Check it out. Eric Ly, CoFounder LinkedIN, Founder and CEO KarmaCheck, Hub, Presdo is interviewed by David Cogan famous host the Heroes Show, and founder Eliances entrepreneur community.  

up in the sky look it's captivating it's energizing it's alliances heroes alliances is the destination for entrepreneurs investors ceos inventors leaders celebrities and startups where our heroes in business align now here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. I will tell you there is nothing more in the world that I would rather do than what I'm doing right now at this moment. Why? Because I get to share with you secrets of people who have made it. They weren't just planted there. They've worked hard. They've either invented, entertained, or created things that we may be using every day within our life. So I'm super excited. And thank you, thank you.

I know I always say this, but I can't thank you enough for the feedback we continue to have from the past hundreds of hundreds. I think we've done now like 1,200 interviews. That's right. And thank you for the feedback when I recently had on the co-founder of Netflix. So keep the feedback coming. That's what drives me and that's what drives others. So I'm super, super, super excited about our next guest. Why?

Well, one of the things he's co-founded, I feel like I use daily and I'm addicted to. And the other thing that he's created, I'm probably going to end up using because I've been doing research on it and it's something you're going to want to use too. So welcome to the show, Eric Lee. He is the co-founder of, are you ready? LinkedIn, founder and CEO of Karma Check, Hub, Presto, and others, and he can be reached at karmacheck.com. Eric, what a background. First of all, co-founder of LinkedIn. I think almost the whole world knows about LinkedIn. Hey, great to be here, David. I hope so. I hope a lot of people know about LinkedIn, at least the professional world, right? How did you get involved with LinkedIn?

Well, I used to joke that, you know, there was a group of us who started the company and we weren't cool enough to start Facebook. So we started LinkedIn instead. And, but, you know, in all seriousness, there was a group of us back about 20 years ago. And we just had this idea that people move around a lot and that we need to keep track of our networks. And there wasn't a tool to do that.

And so we built LinkedIn to try to keep track of our own networks, and that's how it got started. Did you ever think, though, that it would be used by so many and still around to this day continually to expand I mean everybody I know is pretty much on LinkedIn yeah it was a fantastic journey you know when we started we had relatively modest goals I mean we were you know feeling fortunate if it you know kind of worked and you know millions of millions of people, hopefully, on board today. There's more than 850 million professionals on board around the world. It's really been amazing. And I've had experiences where I've been at events and people, you know, come up to me and they've said, hey, LinkedIn really changed my life, especially when times got tough.

And so it's really great to hear those stories uh when you've been a part of it i know so many people that have gotten jobs from it's gotten leads from it i mean just absolutely phenomenal um and and i'm sure if people want to reach out to you they can go to karma check.com or of course you can look them up on linkedin i'd say it's pretty good odds that he's on linkedin i'm on there also too is uh uh for those that may be kind of rather new to LinkedIn too, any secrets in regards to being able to get exposure on LinkedIn? Well, LinkedIn has a lot of, you know, aspects of a typical social network. You know, there are, you know, feeds and you can post your updates on there. It's certainly meant more for the

professional audience than a work-related crowd. And so it doesn't have kind of those topics that a typical social network has. But, you know, a lot of the networking components, what you would do, you know, in a social setting also carry over to work. You know, you want to try to build your own community, build your own followers. And that really comes from just, you know, putting up, you know, content that people care about, you know, in this case, professional topics that you feel like somebody would learn from, you know, your own professional experiences. So those are the kinds of things that I've seen work really well, you know, relevant content for your industry and for your community.

One of the questions we had from our listeners who knew you were coming on was, do you think there'll ever be a, right now I know it's what, 30,000 connections? Do you think that'll ever be, which you can only have a maximum of 30,000? Probably a question maybe you've heard before. Do you think that'll ever be changed? I don't think so. You know, it used to be in the early days, there was not a limit, you know, to how many connections you could have. And there were certainly people who kind of took that to the limit, honestly,

and it sort of crashed the system. But I think the decision was that, you know, it's hard for anyone in the real world to actually have, you know, 30,000, you know, people that they know, even on a professional basis. Now, you know, people have millions of followers on, you know, social media. But that connection, you know, feature on LinkedIn is really about connecting with people who you really know and having a kind of a two-way interaction with. And so there's been doubts about whether it's actually possible to do that with more than 30,000 people. So I would say that's a pretty good limit. Well, let's hope that you still have some connections open so that I can connect with you because you're also watching, listening, me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show.

So make sure that you go to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. Why? Because it's the only place where entrepreneurs align. Because we have with us Eric Lee, co-founder of LinkedIn, founder and CEO of Karma Check Hub, Presdo, and others. You can reach him at karmacheck.com. All right. So Eric, talk to us about the transition then going from LinkedIn, which,

you know, again, grew leaps and bounds. And how did you get involved with being the founder and starting something from scratch again with Karma Check? Well, I always have the entrepreneurial bug in me, and I still do. And a few years ago, I became really interested in this idea around trust. And that's a big word, but it's also a really important word. This was around the same time a few years ago, when we as a society saw all these issues around misinformation and disinformation and having to figure out what sources of information to trust and what sources not.

And what I realized was that this is really important. People make really important judgments based on the information that they're getting. And in the case of LinkedIn and the professional world, people make decisions based on who they want to work with, who they want to hire using this information. So we thought that to have accurate information was really, really important. And so that's why we got into this

idea of helping people to verify the information that exists on their profile, you know, on their resume, really to kind of create that blue checkmark that can exist next to someone's experience so that when others are looking at their qualifications and that their experience they'll know that they're you know looking at accurate information and that's how we started karma check so tell me about how when what is exactly being verified that so it turns out that you know when when people get hired, their experiences matter a lot. You want to know where they've been, what schools they've gone to, what skills they have. And so all that plays into whether someone is qualified for the job that you're looking for. And so today, you know, there is this area of background checks

that is mainly involved in helping companies to verify that information before someone starts. They need to go through those verifications. And in some industries, such as healthcare, the screenings are often very long and very arduous and quite difficult both sides, whether it's for the candidate or for the employer to verify that information. And so at Karma Check, what we want to do is to make that process a lot easier, a lot faster, and just more convenient for everyone. a lot faster and just more convenient for everyone. What would be great is if somebody goes to LinkedIn, then they have a little button there that automatically ties to Karma Check. And one click, you know, again, just throwing out an idea there to someone who created both of them.

But I think that would be pretty cool. So what someone can do is then they go, if they're looking at hiring someone or getting involved with them as a partnership or whatever it may be, and they see them on LinkedIn, then they would go to KarmaCheck after that, enter their information in, and get some type of a verified or not report. Yeah, that's right. Today, we work primarily with businesses who want to verify the backgrounds of people. But in the long run, there are scenarios where people want to just check out the backgrounds of other people before they have some kind of business relationship, whether it's to buy or sell something with them even. And so we can see some new scenarios where this information can be used

beyond businesses to help make those kinds of interactions more trustworthy. And again, we've got Eric Lee here, co-founder of LinkedIn and founder and CEO of KarmaCheck. You can reach him at karmacheck.com. So, Eric, what has surprised you most then with the searches that have been done on KarmaCheck? Are you, I mean, you know, for example, you know, what's the, are people lying? Are they, you know, exaggerating? I mean, what kind of results are you finding from the general public? Well, it's a really interesting space, right? And so when I first started looking into this problem, I thought, well, there must be some kind of fake profiles on LinkedIn. That's to be

expected. So I did some research and I was curious what level of fakeness there was. And it turned out that there was a pretty high level, somewhere between 30 to 40% of the information that you find on LinkedIn is considered not truthful. So that's a large amount. And obviously people try to do their best in terms of obfuscating that to make sure that it looks real, but in fact, it's not real. And what we found at KarmaCheck

is that that carries through to the background check process. And it manifests itself in so many, you know, different ways. You know, businesses want to check all sorts of different kinds of sources even, you know, beyond what we used to have at LinkedIn that employers want to check. And so we had to really, you know, get involved with a lot of those different sources. Some of them are automated, but honestly, there's still a lot of sources of information that businesses want to check that are manual, right? And so the challenge for us was figuring out how can we speed this up across the board, you know, so that as businesses are moving

faster and faster, they can do these verifications and they can do them very quickly as well. So that's been a lot of what we've been doing at ClimateCheck. Eric, how do you get the momentum going like you did with LinkedIn, right? I mean, now LinkedIn's a household name, and eventually after this interview, we'll do our best to make KarmaCheck a household name, but how do you get that momentum? Yeah, thanks for your help, David, and having me participate. You know, we love to work with companies that try to do verifications at scale and that run through tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of people through their platforms. And there are industries today that operate at such scale that have talent and people going through their systems at these rates.

And so as they're going through, we're learning more about these folks and we can use that information to help speed up those checks in the future. It's almost like we're kind of building a verified form of LinkedIn on our platform. verified form of LinkedIn on our platform. And we hope that that data will become valuable in many different ways going to the future. Yeah, I started a healthcare company and had people going to people's homes, RNs, CNAs, and that. And boy, it was a challenging process to get background checks,

but we had to require to be able to do that. You've got people going in their homes, and we followed it to a T. But how does it work? How quickly, when somebody enters the information in on KarmaCheck, do they get back results? Because you mentioned some are not so automated in the background. Yeah, it really depends, honestly. You know, one of the things that we learned about background checks is that

it's a really rich and complicated space when you dig underneath the covers. And so it's hard to answer that question across the board. But in general, what we try to do is we try to radically speed things up because we know that businesses, especially today, there's a shortage of talent and they're competing often for the same candidates, different companies. And so speed in terms of that, bringing that person on board is really a competitive advantage for them.

So in general, what we try to do is to speed it up significantly. speed it up significantly. In a lot of the checks that we do, we are instantaneous today. So there's no wait time in terms of that background check that needs to be done. Some of the other checks we're working on and making it go,

you know, turning it from weeks, which is sort of unheard of these days for someone to have to wait that long to hopefully days at a time, which will also give those businesses that leverage what we do, hopefully a great competitive advantage. What industry are you seeing being used most within KarmaCheck? Well, we see a lot of interest from kind of the contingent aspects of the economy.

You know, there's an increasing amount of people who are doing temporary work or who are shifting around. You know, the gig economy is a great example of that. And so whenever there's, you know, someone who goes from one opportunity to another, there's usually a backline check that gets run. And so what we can do is

we can really help those companies get through that process of getting someone on board very quickly. And so we see that in staffing today, which is enjoying a renaissance of sorts. And particularly in healthcare staffing, like you were talking about, David, where there's just a need for a lot of the professionals in that space, and there's a shortage of talent. And so helping those kinds of companies to really speed through this process has been quite valuable for them. And what info is needed?

So somebody goes to KarmaCheck.com, what information do they need to enter to get a background? So typically there's all the criminal stuff that usually gets checked. But when you go into these kinds of professions where, you know, the candidates themselves are very skilled and very experienced, you know, people are looking for making sure that their work experience has been confirmed, their educational background has been confirmed, their licenses and certifications are up to date, right? This really matters when you're going in and, you know, helping people.

And, you know, people cannot afford, if there's a problem in the background, to be under the care of someone who isn't qualified. someone who isn't qualified. So there's some really important life and death kind of scenarios that we play into in those areas. That's great. Great. So Eric, you know, you started and done so many, you know, so many companies, again, going from co-founder to LinkedIn and other things. I mean, you know, you ever take a break in between each one? I mean, you know, it's like, and here you are starting again, you know, founder and being CEO of KarmaCheck. Like, it's a tremendous amount of work to start something. Why would you have wanted to start something again from scratch? It is a lot of work.

You know, as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you've had many guests who will tell you that there's there's no substitute for just hard work and you know putting in the hours to you know make something success that's successful especially from the beginning but you know I really get a lot of joy you know out of creating something and you know it's usually a product that you know gets put into the market and really helping customers solve their problems. And even beyond that, to the extent that we can put something out there that actually delights them and makes their time even entertaining and fun, well, that's even better. So that is a reward back to me for the time and effort that I put into these companies. What about the kids that are out there? And we've got parents listening. We have high school students that listen to this, college students and that.

And they want to make their mark. The dream is, let me create something that when someone says, what do you do? Oh, have you heard of LinkedIn? Oh, have you heard of Facebook? They want to make it more for almost the name brand recognition than almost what the value may be in itself. What secrets, though, can you share with them to be able to do that? Because as you said, it's hard work. Well, I would say, you know, be inspired, right? You know, the world is becoming more entrepreneurial. There's more and more opportunities for people to start something and to become successful at it. And so never be discouraged, you know, by that. And if I can offer

one, you know, piece of advice, which I've seen come up over and over again with entrepreneurs, is it's really important just to jump in and do something. And use an idea, work on an idea that is good enough. It doesn't need to be perfect. I see a lot of people who wait for that perfect idea or wait for that perfect partner before they start something. They're hesitant before they jump in. And I believe it's really important to just get started, to engage yourself, because you will learn a lot about what you need to do if you do that. If you never try to jump in, you won't know where the challenges and the opportunities are. And so it's just really important to engage.

Excellent. Well, you got it. Get started. Get started. Eric, you have been a foreword of technology for millennia. Continue to develop new ways of operating businesses. That's a hero. That's right. Eric Lee, co-founder of LinkedIn, founder and CEO of Karma Check Hub and others. Make sure you go to karmacheck.com and make sure you go and listen to our,

continuing to listen to our episodes. I'm David Kogan with the Alliances Hero Show. Go to alliances.com. All right, but Eric, you gotta dance. There you go. hero show go to alliances.com