The Equity Network began with a single LinkedIn post.

In the summer of 2020, Kristina Hu (MBA 2022), then an incoming HBS student, was sitting in her San Francisco home watching the Black Lives Matter protests across the country and wondering how she could contribute to the cause. Hu, who is Asian American, had recently become aware of the “Network Gap”—the phenomenon highlighted in a LinkedIn article that said “who you know” matters as much as “what you know” when launching a career, and that not all networks are created equal—and she thought she could help. In an open message on LinkedIn, she offered her own contacts and experiences to any Black college student or recent graduate interested in the finance or tech sectors. “The next morning, my entire calendar was booked up,” she says.

Fellow incoming HBS student Shelby Schrier (MBA 2022) read Hu’s post and it struck a chord. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for the people and networks that have helped me along the way. But most professionals don’t have that same access. I realized that if I wasn’t actively supporting people outside of my alma mater and the companies I’ve worked at, I was only exacerbating the network gap.” Schrier, who is white, had met Hu virtually through the HBS network prior to their first year, and although they had been pursuing independent startups in the travel and online creator spaces, respectively, they began working together as “accountability partners” to help each other along the entrepreneurship path. They later turned their attention to a shared goal: addressing the unmet need revealed by Hu’s LinkedIn post. The pair decided to reach out to their incoming classmates. Before the start of their first semester, 10 percent of the Class of 2022—70 people from a wide array of backgrounds—volunteered their own networks and knowledge to help. This outpouring of support, however, was still not enough to match the number of requests received from students and early-career professionals of color.

Hu and Schrier’s successful volunteer effort evolved into a vision for a sustainable for-profit, social-impact company during HBS Startup Bootcamp in the winter of 2021. “We started with an idea for a solution, but we hadn’t had the opportunity to step back and dive into customer discovery,” explains Schrier. Interviews with potential advisees helped the cofounders create a viable business model. The Equity Network would be a mentor marketplace to give the next generation of Black, Latinx, and Native American business leaders greater access to professional networks and job opportunities. Through the network, which would be supported by employers interested in making a real commitment to achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, these young leaders would be able to speak with the people working in their dream jobs.

“DEI is a frothy space and resources can be limited,” notes Senior Lecturer Julia Austin, who advised the pair early in their venture. But Austin believed that the founders could find the support they needed if they took advantage of all of the School’s resources available to entrepreneurs. “We offered them feedback, structure, advice, and guidance so they got momentum on what they were building,” Austin says.

“I think we checked every student-entrepreneur box in terms of HBS classes, resources, people, and programs that would support us,” Hu says. In addition to taking Austin’s Startup Operations field course, the founders were Social Enterprise Summer Fellows, and the company was part of the Rock Accelerator program. The Equity Network was also a semifinalist in the Social Enterprise track of the 2021 New Venture Competition hosted by the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and the Social Enterprise Initiative. The founders received support from their HBS classmates, too. “One of the keys to the success of any HBS startup is the power of the community and the ways that its members go above and beyond for each other,” Schrier says.

In the summer of 2021, the Equity Network launched a pilot program with 37 Black and Latinx college students and recent graduates and 55 HBS students as advisors. About 90 percent of those involved in the pilot opted into the full-scale launch of the network. Along the way, Hu and Schrier addressed some potential challenges in their model, including how to help advisees navigate the long list of potential advisors (the platform now recommends matches) and how to ensure advisors understand their impact (the platform now has an easy way to send thank-you notes).

In February 2022, the Equity Network merged with Candoor, a two-person startup focused on the importance of having coaching and feedback from someone within a company when applying for a job. Austin calls the partnership a “smart and self-aware” step toward their big-picture goals.

“The vision is to create a world in which diverse talent is no longer underrepresented,” says Hu. “This is an opportunity to get the whole community involved and help change minds as well as create the seeds of more equitable systems in the long term.”

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