Bandana operates a website focused on helping hourly-wage workers find better jobs closer to home, showing pay ranges, estimated take-home pay after taxes, benefits, and map locations. The site lists between 18,000 and 25,000 jobs on any given day and has attracted more than 150,000 New York City job seekers since launch, over 130,000 of them organically. The company estimates 10,000–15,000 people have found jobs through the platform and acquires users for roughly 1.5 cents each via content marketing on TikTok and Instagram (one video garnered over 12 million views). Bandana has begun monetization with sponsored posts but has primarily focused on user growth to date. The new funding will support geographic expansion beyond NYC into nearby New Jersey, Long Island and areas north of the Bronx, and plans to launch in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area by Q1 2025, along with broader subway, bus-station and billboard advertising. Future product plans include a generative AI search tool to match job seekers by description, and eventual expansion into training, certifications and financial literacy. Financially, the company announced an $8.5M investment this round, bringing total funding to $12.3M. Bandana is building a two-sided marketplace that helps hourly wage workers find jobs that pay above minimum wage, offer benefits like health insurance and paid time off, and include a job location to keep opportunities reasonably close to home. The platform aggregates employer postings by connecting to major employers' job-posting websites and pulling their listings into Bandana. The company is concentrating initially on jobs in the New York City area. Founders Timothy Makalinao (CEO), Caleb Lee (COO) and Larry Zhang (CTO) launched the company last year and operate with a lean team of six employees. Early beta traction saw 30,000 people find the initial version of the site without advertising. Bandana plans to use its seed capital to keep the site free for about a year to attract users, then charge employers for job postings. Longer-term plans include geographic expansion, worker certifications to enable career growth, and fintech features to help workers with savings and money management.

Total raised

$12M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Aug 2024