This tech CEO grew up among small business owners. Now he's helping others with their HR needs

Allan Jones has always been surrounded by small businesses. Both of his grandmothers ran businesses in their communities: a childcare center and a hat shop; and his parents ran a mini market out of their home town Long Beach, California.

“I grew up seeing the inner workings and the dynamics of not just those small companies, but the intentions of the people that were running them,” Jones says. “My family.”

But trouble came knocking when Jones was 12-years-old and his parents were sued over a wrongful termination after failing to follow state regulation standards — regulations his parents were never even aware they had overlooked. 

“My parents had to pull out of my college fund to pay for lawyers,” Jones says. “They were lower middle class, blue collar and my dad was not only running that mini market, he had a full-time job on the side. The anxiety felt like an emotional tornado through my household.”

These regulations, among other industry requirements, are typically overseen by HR departments, yet the majority of small businesses don’t have a dedicated HR team to handle those things. In fact, 54% of small businesses handle HR in house, according to Docebo, a software service company, usually outsourcing it to other staff, 31% of whom felt unqualified for the job.

Read More: This tech platform is solving tax headaches for small businesses

As Jones pursued his own career in the tech industry — including roles as chief marketing officer at ZipRecruiter and head of product at Docstoc — helping small businesses and business owners was never far from his mind. He founded Bambee six years ago, a virtual platform that provides small businesses with vital HR services at an affordable price. 

“I kept hearing those themes kind of repeated over and over again,” Jones says. “Regular people running small companies have really no idea how they should be handling the internal dynamics of the people that work inside those businesses.” 

Jones saw an opportunity to do two things — first, to guide small business owners through tumultuous times, and second, to make sure those small business owners treat their own employees with respect and professionalism. 

“I thought ‘How do big companies solve this problem?’ And the answer was really clear: HR,” Jones says. “So the next question was ‘Why don't small companies have HR?’ and the answer was price. They could not afford to hire an HR manager relative to the amount of money they made inside their small firms.” 

Jones explains that a business owner running a single owned and operated franchise could be making somewhere around $30,000 in revenues a month, and an HR manager could cost approximately $6,000 a month — pricing out many small business owners from the level of infrastructure that could benefit them. 

Bambee is solving this problem with their pool of qualified HR managers that they assign to small businesses on a monthly basis for $99 a month. Currently, Bambee has over 10,000 small business owners using their services.

Read More: Small businesses are leaving themselves vulnerable to cyber attacks

“When you run a small business and you only have five employees, you only probably need your HR manager once a month,” Jones says. “So we assign HR managers to companies in bulk — like a timeshare. We assign around a hundred small business customers to one specific HR manager and then we build automation technology internally to help them be really efficient with those accounts.” 

While there are many things small businesses can do without, compared to their big corporate counterparts, HR managers should not be one of them, Jones says. HR teams oversee everything from promotions to termination paperwork, as well as compliance. Most importantly, they help clear the plate of small business owners already juggling a lot. 

“We give them peace of mind so that small business owners aren't spending their evening after dinner searching for simple things like ‘How do I write a job description? Or what is the right paperwork to give someone in order to onboard them?’” Jones says. “Or ‘How much should I pay someone to be in compliance with the minimum wage in Santa Monica?’”

Jones has vowed to help small businesses avoid the position his parents were put in when he was a child, simply because they  can’t afford an HR manager — those services should be made available in some way, shape or form to all who need them.

“With technology, there's really no reason for you to continue to run your mom and pop business like a mom and pop business,” Jones says. “There are so many inexpensive services in this category that allow you to level up your operation internally if you want it.”