The inaugural Alabama Inno Madness brought some key attention to the innovation sector and entrepreneurship in the state, but only one company could emerge as the winner.
GoodJob, a Birmingham-based hiring company, secured the win. The company’s CEO Stephen Johnston said he is grateful for the win.
Johnson also said that he is familiar with many other companies in the competition, and he said GoodJob was fortunate to emerge as the winner.
Inno Madness for Johnston also marked the importance of having innovative technology businesses in the state and having a mentality of abundance when it comes to growing the technology sector and technology business in Alabama.
“It’s a real honor to emerge as the winner. But it (took) a lot of work to encourage people to vote for your company, and I think people have to feel like there’s a reason to do that,” Johnston said. “We got great support from our users, and our marketing team did a good job of putting together a campaign. We think we built something cool and innovative and great for Alabama, as well as the rest of the country, so we were excited to participate.”
The company launched its product about a year ago. That followed a previous soft launch during which the company made changes based on customer feedback.
In 2021, GoodJob raised $3 million in funding. The funds were used to fuel its marketing and sales efforts in major markets across the country. The investment came on the heels of a 2020 acquisition of Fetch Talent LLC.
After the official launch, which coincided with the “Great Resignation” push, the company has been growing. Johnston said there has never been a more pressing time for companies to find people who can help them be successful.
“When we started, we started to change the way people identify the right people and make the hiring process a lot simpler for companies,” he said. “We didn’t know that there would be things like the great resignation. Or just this huge difficulty for companies to try to find people and retain people that can be successful, which plays right into the hands of the platform that we built.”
The company is swiftly expanding and finding success. Johnston also has growth plans on top of its forward momentum.
“When we launched, we were intentionally focused on primarily Alabama — at the time including the greater Birmingham area,” he said. “And so, we focused on that to perfect our solution and our product, but now that we know the product works, and we’re delivering great value to companies, our focus is growth.”
For now, Johnston has the Southeast targeted for the next year, but other parts of the country are on the horizon.
“We hope to grow with our customers where they have needs and expand with them, but we’re entering what I call a growth phase of the business, where it’s just about a market expansion and moving into new markets and being very strategic and focused about how to be successful in these markets,” he said.
