Glassbreakers Is Launching Enterprise Software For Diversity

Glassbreakers, the mentorship platform for women, is getting into the enterprise software business, after recently doing trial runs with Box and Pinterest. Next year, Glassbreakers will officially launch an enterprise solution for diversity to companies with over 10,000 employees.

The Glassbreakers enterprise software will offer mentorship for women, a content channel to highlight company thought leaders, and company-specific data analytics around diversity. Down the road, Glassbreakers will offer its solution to all employee resource groups, like ones for LGBTQ people, and people from diverse racial and ethnic groups.

“What’s cool about doing enterprise with these larger companies is that it just creates such a bigger impact,” Glassbreakers Co-Founder Lauren Mosenthal (pictured above on right) told TechCrunch. “We’ll make a deal with them and then thousands of women are plugged into the system, and getting more confident and caring about their careers, and having more support in these companies.”

Even though Glassbreakers started with consumers first, launching an enterprise solution has always been the plan. Before Mosenthal and Glassbreakers Co-Founder Eileen Carey (pictured above on left) quit their jobs, they had already decided that enterprise software is what would make the business scale and ultimately make money. By tackling diversity at the corporate level, Carey and Mosenthal are hoping to make the C-suite at least 50% female.

It’s also a big business opportunity for Glassbreakers. There’s a lot of money in corporate diversity (in 2013, big corporations collectively spent $8 billion on diversity, according to Workforce Management), but none of that money is going towards software. After speaking with dozens of corporate diversity leaders, Mosenthal and Carey realized that many diversity departments don’t have any software to measure their impact and scale.

“We’re in a really interesting space where we’re creating a new brand category for a core business function and a big part of corporate organizations that isn’t being served,” Carey said. “There’s no software out there right now that’s actually helping these people, improving their stuff and making them more efficient.”

In the diversity space, there are a handful of startups addressing the issue from different angles, though, mostly through the lens of recruiting. Glassbreakers hopes to provide a solution that can make a difference right now.

“We wanted to build something we could implement today and effect change for people who are already there,” Mosenthal said. “So moving away from the pipeline, but I think that can and will help the pipeline because then they’ll be known as a company that cares about diversity.”

Since launching earlier this year, Glassbreakers has grown to 12,000 people, who collectively represent 90% of Fortune 100 companies and 80% of Fortune 500 companies. Glassbreakers is also now open to three new industries: finance, legal and nonprofits.

To date, Glassbreakers has raised over $1 million from investors like Jocelyn Goldfein, the former director of engineering at Facebook, Susan Kimberlin, former director of product management at Salesforce, and others. The startup might look to raise a Series A round next year.