Tech Startups and HR - Products and Services Edition

Back in early May I talked about exploring the tech startup scene, both in New York City and elsewhere. With that, one of the things I'll be putting on display here are posts from others interested in sharing their views. Some will focus on a particular subject related to the series, while others may focus on a particular product or service.

One such participant is Avi Feld. Avi reached out to me several months ago via email. What separated him from others seeking my advice was his honesty. He's someone that has an idea of a useful service and was looking for a way to genuinely connect with the end user, which in this case was HR professionals. We spoke for a bit on the phone and the idea for this blog post was born.

Take it away, Avi!


Before I start, I want to take a moment to thank Victorio for giving me this opportunity to be a guest blogger. We have only recently met, but from our interactions can already begin to tell what a great guy he is.

I want to use this first post to introduce myself and lay out exactly what I hope to accomplish here. My name is Avi Feld, and beyond my interactions as an employee of a few companies, am quite new to Human Resources. I graduated from Yeshiva University with a major in marketing and have spent my career so far in the Digital Advertising space working in Ad Agencies, a publishing house, and a large financial institution. From my experiences as an employee, and a friend of a few HR professionals, I came up with an idea to build a product to help companies solve some major pain points in the area of employee events.

Kahal is a platform that makes it easy for companies to set up and manage great employee events such as softball teams, volunteer days, walking challenges, etc. See the intro video at www.kahal.co. Each event has a beautifully designed custom module that gives employees a place to find relevant information, and an avenue to enjoy and experience these events that many companies put a lot of time, money and resources behind. On the management side, we are making it simple to set these events up. No longer will anyone have to manually add names to spreadsheets, or dread answering the same question over and over. Kahal makes the set-up and management of these events dead simple, saving time and money. Company culture no longer has to be a hassle.

What I want to do as I build the product, is learn more about how this industry works from an insiders perspective, and begin to become a part of and contribute to the rich HR community. Everything from an outsiders perspective always looks so simple, and even more so for me when approaching the world of HR. I started out with a general idea of what types of tools and resources were really needed in human resources, and the more I learn the more the more I see complexities and nuances that need to be addressed to make this product work. As I begin to speak with people, and just scratch the surface of the industry, I find myself with the feeling that I’m staring up at a thousand foot cliff face and realizing I forgot to learn how to climb.

So that’s me... I hope as I continue to learn the ins and outs of Human Resources I will be able to present issues and ideas I have from a unique “newbie’s” point of view, and, if you guys are up for it, share my journey with you. I really hope I get to connect with the readers of this blog to talk, and learn about the space... I have a TON of questions!

Please post a comment below if you have a few minutes to chat. I can be reached at avi(at)kahal.co or on twitter via @quertis or @kahal_co. I have also put together a 2-3 min, 9 question survey that I’d love if you filled out. You can access it here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JMBMMCV

I will be giving 3 $100 Visa gift cards to 3 random people who fill it out.