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IN-DEPTH REPORTING ON THE INNOVATION ECONOMY October 12, 2019 TheOpinion Big Read December 30, 2020 LetterCanada’s from PayPal the editor: Mafia: TheA votesurprising for afterlifeFacebook of By DavidWorkbrain, Skok the 2000s-era startup that inspired some of CEO & Editor-in-Chief ofCanada’s The Logic most promising tech companies hile we won’t know who will form Canada’s next government for nine more days, I’m ready to declare a ByW Murad Hemmadi winner: Facebook. Entering the fifth week of the federal election cam- paign, thereor companies appears to be that no substantive make HR evidence software of for other companies, foreign theinfluence spring through must the have platform. been Facebookan anxious has time. Over a week or been responsiveso in early in removing April, orthe down-ranking U.S. reported ques- its worst monthly job lossesFtionable since posts, theand itsfinancial data-sharing crisis: practices 701,000. have al -Canada saw over a mil- lionlowed people researchers newly and out reporters of work, to see the what’s largest going single-month decline in on inside the platform for the first time. four decades of recordkeeping. It’s an impressive turn of events for a company thatHR has tech faced firms a lot of warrantedwatched criticism,as clients including laid off many of the workers theirin this software publication. was used to manage. Some saw their stock prices drop.You’ll Several recall laid that off in employees.January, the federal The next gov month’s- unemployment numbersernment establishedwere even a worse, task force as thecomprised global economyof seemed set for asome recession of its most unseen senior since civil theservants Great to Depression.monitor But in the ensu- ingthe months,election for HR substantial tech firms threats did andnot alertnecessarily par- go into freefall. Far fromty leaders, it. Elections Canada and the public if it detectedTake Ceridian, any skulduggery. headquartered in Minneapolis, but runImages from courtesy up -of Linnaea Mallette, Public Domain Pictures and alex80, Pixabay. Illustration by Hanna Lee for The Logic. townI asked Toronto. several Recurring officials in revenueOttawa if they’dfor its de-core Dayforce product actuallytected any went suspicious up 12.2 foreign per influence cent year in overthe cam year- inthat the the third company’s quarter. suppression protocols worked. the misinformation on FacebookAnson Chanin this for election The Logic has paign to date. Those who responded all answered In The Logic’s own tests during the campaign come not from foreign actors abusing the platform The 4,000-plus firms that use Ceridian’s payroll, talent and work- with a resounding “no.” and in the weeks leading up to it, Facebook flagged but from the campaigns and their surrogates. That’s force-management“Generally speaking, platform we have continue seen a largely to bring and back blocked staff. all adsAfter that violatedToronto-headquartered its political adver- theworkforce-management sad truth underlying election software manipulation compa in- April’sclean election, slump, with Ceridian’s much less stock of a kind is back of misrep to historic- tising highs. policies, The often com within- ny minutes that Ossip of the started,content tookthis campaign.public and sold nearly a decade and a panyresented plans advertiser to hire [or]2,000 misinformation people in Canada kinds of over beingthe next submitted five foryears. approval. half ago. To quote the great philosopher Pogo, we have contentIt turns that out we havethat seen businesses, in the U.S. evenand the struggling U.K.,” ones,Facebook’s need to transparency pay Ossip and advertising launched dis Workbrain- met the in enemy 1999, and when it is not tech Facebook; valuations it is us. were theirLaura employees. Edelson told ManyThe Canadian will also Press still this need week. to scheduleclosures havetheir also shifts helped soaring educate and voters startups about proliferating.A brief scan But of the the nextofficial few Liberal years and brought Conser- andEdelson track is atheir researcher time. withSo, companiesNew York Universi that make- what’s payroll, taking time place and on itschallenges. platform. CountlessFrom its Torontovative Twitterheadquarters, feeds is enough the company to depress thrivedthe most attendancety’s Online Politicaland scheduling Transparency software Project, are which proving column indispensable—so inches have been even filled as thewith dot-com reporting bubblehardened burst among around us. it, and it weathered the far.has “Aspartnered long withas businesses the Digital areDemocracy open—which Project is ona new disinformation, qualifier I’m ad spendingeconomic and shocksawareness of recession,As The 9/11 Verge and reporter SARS. Casey In 2003,Newton Ossip wrote addingto monitor since Facebook COVID—it’s ads during an the essential campaign. need,” “If andsays researchers Martin Harts have- beentook given the unprecedented company public last atweek, a near-quarter-billion-dollar “People seem to be holding Facebook valua- horne,disinformation the recently ads come installed out, my suspicionCEO of is Minneapolis-basedthey access to Facebook’s sched- “firehose”—thetion. Ossip, then,hundreds knows responsible something for aboutpoliticians’ adversity, lies when opportunity, we could be will come out [in] the last week.” of terabytes tracking all the likes and shares on holding the politicians responsible instead.” uling platform When I Work. “It’s not superfluous. It’s not some and the business of building a fast-growing tech company. But the It’s not that there hasn’t been any fake the platform. I’m not letting Facebook off the hook. It took extranews productivityduring the campaign. tool.” But when it has ap- Much remains out of sightlessons for researchers—all of Workbrain’s seven-and-a-half-yearmarket and regulatory pressure life aren’tto force his the alone.compa- peared—forBut there mayexample, be something in a Buffalo else Chronicle at work in advertisementsCeridian’s success, not labelled They political, inform all the private trajectory ny toof work not onlyon a problemCeridian that and it hadother long HR ignored. tech particularlyitem earlier throughthis week—Facebook the past few months.has taken posts, all comments, messagesfirms, andbut alla hostprivate of scale-upsBut its sincerityacross theisn’t country—manyreally relevant if what of it’swhich do- measuresTo tackle to reducea crisis, its aspread. company needs “a very groups—despiteresilient, persistent Facebook trace initially their promising roots back to to ingWorkbrain. appears to be working. teamMcGill of people” University with analyzed the desire the fake“to succeed,Chron- regardlessprovide much of of obsta that. -But withToday, what Facebooka generation has of WhenCanadian a politician tech executives—manystarts a campaign with still low cle,”icle itemsays andDavid found Ossip, that CEO while of it Ceridian, reached 24 once madea fading available, U.S. researchersgiant working have been in able HR to tech—citepro- expectations their time and at exceeds Workbrain them, they’reas formative, declared thatmillion his peopleteam turnedacross allinto social Canada’s platforms, biggest it was tech vide IPO detailed of the updates 2010s. to voters.a school for the skills aand winner. experience On that premise,they’ve Facebookneeded tocan shape take a Butdramatically Ossip is lowertalking on notFacebook. about COVID-19This suggests and Ceridian,All of this but transparency about promisinghas revealed thatcompanies most of invictory the current lap. innovation economy. “It was another outbreak—SARS—and another team: Workbrain, the better than a Harvard MBA,” says Neil Grunberg, co-founder and (#S078730) Reprinted from the October 12, 2019 edition of The Logic. Copyright © 2019 The Logic Inc. All Rights Reserved. For information about reprints and licensing, visit www.parsintl.com. the new systems and trainers to teach customers’ employees how to use them. Right from the start, Workbrain went after the biggest targets. Marquee first customers included the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal power company covering seven U.S. states; the North American operations of British Airways; and Russell Athletic, Ma- jor League Baseball’s uniform maker at the time. Initially, firms of that size weren’t keen to even take a meeting with a startup, particularly one from Toronto. “We were selling giant enterprise software, massive multimillion-dollar contracts to huge American companies,” says Daniel Debow, who helped write Workbrain’s original business plan before taking a series of executive roles. “They didn’t want to hear about a Canadian com- vice-president of strategy and corporate development at Montre- pany—that made them worried.” So Workbrain opened offices in al-based AlayaCare, a 450-person firm that makes software for Toronto and Atlanta simultaneously, and listed the U.S. side first home care providers. on its website. By mid-2007, Workbrain the company was gone, subsumed into The company had people who could close those big-ticket deals. Infor, a private equity-fuelled, acquisition-hungry rollup. But the Jodi Kovitz, who spent a 10-month stint as a marketing coordina- company’s culture, and a number of its high-level employees, are tor starting in late 2000, sat outside the office of co-founder David now scattered throughout Canada’s tech ecosystem. Hoping to Stein. “I used to listen to him sell, really through relationships,” replicate the energy, culture and success they’d found at Work- she recalls, calling Stein one of the best practitioners of the craft brain, they founded or joined many of the country’s next crop of she’s known. “I learned how to do that in my bones.” high-growth startups. If Canada has anything like a PayPal Mafia Ossip and Stein flew in for some of the sales meetings, as region- —alumni of the payments company who created new success sto- al sales executive Daniel Huber pitched major national brands and ries, like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel and Af- iconic Midwestern manufacturers.

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