Profile: Marissa McNeelands and Toast

Tell us about what your company does.

Toast is a membership-based women's collective founded to flip the hiring dynamic in favor of women in tech.

1. We help women get the jobs they want by partnering with companies that are committed to gender diversity. We help Toast partner companies find and place women into open roles on their teams.

2. We help women get the pay they deserve through negotiation support, career coaching, and online workshops.

3. We provide women in tech with a supportive online community supplemented by IRL meetups and events in major cities across Canada.

What was the insight/inspiration that led you to launch it?

I took a big leap from talent acquisition into tech about 7 years ago and was immediately shocked by the audacity of the highly male tech workforce - where the person who speaks the loudest, most confident, and interrupts the most is the one who earns respect. I always thought "if I work harder, learn more, go to school, gain more experience, and become an expert, it will get better" 

Surprise - it didn't!

As I advanced in my career I saw fewer and fewer women. This negatively impacted my level of engagement, how I viewed my career progression, and most importantly - my wallet.

Once I sought community outside of my organization I met a group of women that I could talk to about salary, and where I wanted to go. One of those women is my now co-founder, who opened up doors for me by making introductions, and encouraging me to negotiate my salary and ask for more - and I ended up doubling my salary within a year!

I know that a ton of women are just missing a little more support to get them to the next level, and Toast was created to scale that support.

What are you trying to achieve over the next 12 months?

We want to disrupt the way companies hire by reducing bias in the recruitment process. We are currently working on tech that will match candidates with inclusive workplaces based on parameters that actually matter. I hope to pressure companies to make more data-driven hiring decisions, and get rid of resumes and cover letters once and for all!

*We brought a few questions to Marissa from our TechTO Community - here's what she had to share:

Have you watched companies in the Tech space make the extra effort to hire female/diverse employees?

The vast majority of companies continue to post jobs the same way they always have, and when women do not apply they simply move forward with male candidates rather than looking at how their hiring practices exclude underrepresented groups.

I think most companies don't have the capacity to invest in the lack of diversity as a business priority. Toast helps recruiters present diverse candidates for roles where they have the majority of male candidates. We make it easy so that there doesn't have to be much extra effort on the companies' side. But I do also see a bigger push happening in this space - VCs are calling out founders for their lack of diversity, and the government is putting pressure on gender diversity as an ESG target for bigger companies.

At Toast we want to ensure that we are working with companies that also walk the talk and aren't just reaching out to meet their female quota for investors - so we always approach companies with a little bit of skepticism.

As a WOC, how can I sound more confident during interviews?

There is nothing worse than having to change yourself to fit into the box that society wants to see you in. I know it can be intimidating to meet with a representative of the company and have to sell your skills to them, but I urge you to think of that representative as a human first.

As an old boss of mine used to say: put the fish on the table. If you are feeling nervous, say it. If you know that you come across as timid or shy in an interview, let them know ahead of time by simply saying "I look forward to telling you about myself in our interview, but I first want to let you know that I am quite introverted and when that is mixed with the nervousness of interviews, I can sometimes come across as not being confident in my answers. I assure you that my work speaks for itself and once I am within a team where I feel comfortable, I become more assertive. I wanted to give you a heads-up."

If you aren't feeling like putting yourself out there like that, you can always ask yourself W.W.J.D. - What Would Josh Do? He'd walk in like he already has the job and he's only there to educate the interviewers on how to best interview him!

Aim for that and you'll land somewhere in the middle.

How to bounce back after rejection?

Start thinking of it as a numbers game, it can soften the blow: only 1/10 interactions will be a yes, so it takes 9 no's to get to that one yes.

When you face rejection, it's only leading you to your yes. So get a spreadsheet going and start playing the odds.

Was there a specific experience that made you notice why we needed to support women in tech?

Although I've had a lot of experiences personally that have led me here, one of the most jolting things I heard was a couple of years ago when I was doing research for a side project around women returning to work from maternity leave and one of the women we surveyed said: "the workplace wasn't made for women".

What is included in a Toast membership?

• An online community of other incredible women in tech to network with and learn from!

• Monthly coffee meetups in your city.

• Monthly career category online workshops.

• Free tickets to IRL events in major cities.

• Access to our in-house employment lawyer & HR expert so you know your rights!

• Salary insights & negotiation help for negotiating your next contract, job offer, salary increase, or severance package.

• Credits to meet with our roster of career coaches.

Click on the image to learn more about Toast

Quick Takes: Cookin' cooks up $17m to bring you a new type of food delivery service

What is Cookin and how is it different than other players in the market?

Cookin is a new Toronto-based food delivery app. Cookin allows cooks to work from home and is delivering "home-cooked" meals through its app.

What makes Cookin compelling to investors?

The usual combination of team, market and disruption of the market:

• Founders: Cookin was founded by Morley Ivers and Michael Bauch who have known each other since high school and previously worked together at Points.com. Morley has also co-founded a company that was acquired and was CEO of FanXchange which was acquired by Vivid Seats while he was running the company.

• Market size: The online food delivery market is a massive and growing market estimated to be $430B USD. It has only continued to expand since the pandemic.

• Disruption: Cookin is trying to enter the market in a legal grey zone by enabling chefs to work from their homes. This enables chefs to lower overhead, keep a larger percentage of the GMV, and keep the cost of delivered food low compared to competitors.

From a VC perspective, the founder knows each other and have proven they can execute and only need a small percent of the market to build a massive business.

Who is backing this?

The round was led by Relay with participation from Mistral Ventures and several angels.

Both VCs have past investments in the restaurant industry with Relay having invested in 7Shfits, TouchBistro and Mistral having invested in Ritual.

Did it have traction by the time it raised?

Not clear when the round was closed versus announced. Our guess is that it was raised much earlier than announced. The traction they shared with the announcement is that 6,000 meals from 62 chefs have been delivered with 36% of people re-ordering. 1,800 chefs have also applied and 80 have been onboarded as of now.

We know why this is intriguing so on the flip side, what are the risks of this investment?

As mentioned above, this is a grey area.

There are several regulations that enable chefs to cook from home but in most jurisdictions, it is not allowed. This means that chefs have to abide by local rules and still might break the law.

It is quite possible that if there is one health issue or if restaurants organize, they can create a public backlash that will make this hard to get this shut down.

Another challenge is the economics of chefs. How much can they scale at home before they have to open a restaurant?

Take aways for the community?

This is not most people, and founders should not take this round and valuations as a benchmark. It will be interesting to see how stakeholders react to companies trying to disrupt regulation. It enabled Airbnb and Uber to scale quickly but cities have fought back and there is skepticism about the culture this creates.

But remember.

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Headlines and Content

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