How Diversity Built One of Atlanta’s Biggest Small Businesses
Paul Judge, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Pindrop.
• Customers want to do business with companies that share their values.
• Workplace diversity goes beyond race and gender, to encompass characteristics like generation and perspectives.
• Even companies with diverse leadership need to plan to replicate that diversity with the next generation of business leaders.
Cybersecurity firm Pindrop is one of Atlanta’s hottest tech startups, but it may not have existed at all had its co-founder been able to purchase a snazzy new suit. While traveling in India, Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop’s CEO, visited a tailor to have a suit cut for him. When he tried to pay for the suit, the transaction was flagged as fraudulent activity. When an agent called Balasubramaniyan to verify his identity, there was no reliable way to prove who he was over the phone.
Balasubramaniyan left without the suit, but with an idea: What if voice technology could be used to authenticate callers? Such a solution could be a game changer for the call center industry, which boasts an estimated $25 billion global market. In 2010, he set about inventing this technology—Pindrop calls it “phoneprinting”—which analyzes over 1,300 audio characteristics to differentiate authentic callers from scammers.
Pindrop became profitable last year and received a $925 million valuation in its latest round of funding. It’s an accomplishment made sweeter by the fact that Pindrop is a unicorn among unicorns—the rare tech startup with a robustly diverse senior leadership and workforce.
The company grew with help from Dr. Mustaque Ahamad, Balasubramaniyan’s former professor at Georgia Tech, who introduced him to Paul Judge, a local serial entrepreneur focused on tech startups. With two Indian-Americans and a Black American as its co-founders, Pindrop, with diversity and inclusion as foundational company principles, has grown to 248 employees and counting. At present, two-thirds of Pindrop’s senior leadership comes from groups underrepresented in the tech industry, according to Christine Kaszubski, the firm’s Chief People Officer.
“Our employees get to see themselves in our leadership team,” says Kaszubski. “That’s a thing a lot of companies, for good reason, are striving to achieve, and our people get to live that every day. It’s pretty unheard of, but it’s also really representative of Atlanta.”
Kaszubski said the company created a diverse environment by considering an expansive definition of diversity. “We’re diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender, but also in terms of generation, background, and perspective and all of those things come together to drive a more creative and adaptable organization.”
Pindrop’s diversity efforts have directly fueled its growth by aligning its values with those of the companies it has sought as customers. “Companies that value diversity mesh very well with our team because Pindrop demonstrates that commitment at all levels,” says Kaszubski. Fortune 500 companies, nearly all of which have incorporated diversity and inclusion into their core values in recent years, comprise 70% of Pindrop’s clientele.
Pindrop’s home base of Atlanta has had a marked impact on the diversity of the talent the company has attracted. Kaszubski notes the city’s reputation as an education powerhouse that includes four historically Black colleges and universities as well as Georgia Tech and Georgia State University, which provide a springboard for Pindrop’s recruitment efforts. Judge did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College, then earned a doctoral degree from Georgia Tech, as did Balasubramaniyan.
The skilled graduates and diversity these schools offer have helped make Atlanta a fast-growing tech hub. “The Googles and the Honeywells are coming to Atlanta because they know that diverse talent is here,” says Kaszubski.
And the company is laying the groundwork to sustain its diverse leadership long into the future through cross-functional committees—“Tiger Teams”—that connect Pindrop’s midlevel leaders and hold them accountable for the company’s strategic initiatives. Those teams are just as diverse as the senior leadership.
Learn More:
• How to set and meet your company’s diversity goals (Harvard Business Review)
• Calendly, an Atlanta tech startup that’s grown to $1 billion in valuation, explores the company’s value system, including the importance of diversity. (Calendly)
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