LandIt

Promoting career advancement for diverse organizational talent

Company: LandIt operates a personalized career pathing platform created to increase the success and engagement of women and diverse groups in the workplace. The platform offers a turn-key “one size fits one” solution that enables companies to attract, develop, and retain diverse high-potential talent.

HQ Location & Year Founded: New York, 2014

Founder: Lisa Skeete Tatum, Founder and CEO, previously was a General Partner for over a decade with Cardinal Partners, a $350 million early-stage healthcare venture capital firm. Lisa also worked for Procter & Gamble, GE Capital, and founded her own consulting practice. Lisa serves on numerous high growth, public, and nonprofit boards, including Stryker Corporation (NYSE: SYK), Union Square Hospitality Group, Cornell University Board of Trustees, McCarter Theater, The Lawrenceville School, and the Harvard Business School Board of Dean’s Advisors. Lisa received her BS in chemical engineering from Cornell University and her MBA from Harvard Business School. 

Funds Raised and VC Investors: $26 million from Alumni Ventures, Connectivity Ventures Fund, Costanoa Ventures, Cue Ball, Female Founders Fund, GingerBread Capital, Infor Global Solutions, Morgan Stanley, Multicultural Innovation Lab, NEA, Pilot Mountain Ventures, SAP.iO, Sofia Fund, Uprising Ventures, Valo Ventures, Village Capital, Wavemaker Partners, WeWork, Workday Ventures, Xfund

• Where did the idea for LandIt originate?

Like most entrepreneurs, I got the idea for LandIt from a pain point that I personally experienced. I started my career as a chemical engineer working for P&G. I then went over to the business side and caught the bug of startups and venture capital. I wanted to get into VC, but was told that I only had a real chance to break in if I first went to business school. So I followed this advice, got into VC, where I spent 12 years and worked my way up to Partner. After a decade, I was at an inflection point, where I wanted to move on but was not sure of what to do next. At this time, I served as President of the HBS Alumni Board. We held a conference to celebrate “50 Years of Women at HBS.” Over 60% of the women who attended said they were at an inflection point, but were also in the custom of telling people that “everything is fine.” 

I got to thinking more about how to unlock human potential and how to give everyone a seat at the table. Most organizations focus on intake of talent, however they have traditionally been less focused on what happens to their people as they develop and what can be done to help them thrive and progress. It is really about access and not capability. I felt strongly that organizations couldn’t touch as many lives without the ability to do it in a truly personalized way. My idea was to enable organizations to invest in their talent more in a more equitable manner.

• What is the key problem that LandIt intends to solve? 

We help companies tap into their largest resource, which is their pool of talent. People are not thriving as the current system is broken. We focus on the pooling of diversity at early stages by giving people what they need. We help solve retention through providing development, mobility and engagement, creating a win-win situation. LandIt helps individuals achieve their goals, while the organization wins by fully utilizing their talent. 

• How are you most differentiated as a service?

We have two key components to our platform:

1. Personalization. One size fits one. We meet each person where they are at scale. All we need is an email in order to get started.

2. Talent multiplier. Coaching is an accelerator and we offer other platform elements, such as developing a personal Board of Advisor, and developing an executive presence. We bring people together to produce accelerated results, which reduce disengagement and quiet quitting.

• What are the company’s key accomplishments to date?

We work with organizations ranging  Fortune 500s to high growth companies and nonprofits, and the results are the same across the board. Retention, mobility and performance are all improved. On average, we have demonstrated a 25-35% increase in mobility, a 2x increase in engagement, as well as a 40% increase in positive sentiment. We help all across organizations from leaders to individual contributors. We have shown success with diverse talent and across locations and have been used in over 30 countries. We meet people where they are. 

• What lies ahead in the plans for LandIt?

We are focused on scaling by working with amazing companies. There is a proliferation of need with what’s going on across industries today. Our solution applies across organizations and will continue to scale, globalize, and deliver on what we’ve done with personalization and acceleration of the individual. We have product-market fit. We are now focused on touching as many lives as possible.

Ron’s Take

Cultivating a diverse, thriving workforce can be a complex matter that does not happen without significant organizational attention and intent. Lisa Skeete Tatum and her team at LandIt are providing the tools the employers can tap right into to address the root cause of employee dissatisfaction and lack of productivity. This comes from lack of engagement and direct, personalized attention on development goals. As the labor market continues to remain tight even with a looming economic downturn, companies will have to find new ways of serving and empowering their organizations in order to remain competitive. LandIt is one scalable solution for doing so.

Disclaimer: Alumni Ventures invested in multiple rounds of LandIt in 2017 and 2019.