These were the opening lines of Goldman’s April 2023 Lion’s Cage Competition pitch for Layoff Lookout, an innovative company intended to promote “layoff transparency.” Co-founded with his cousin Noah Schwartz, their business model functions through an early alert email system notifying users of upcoming mass layoffs planned by their employer or affecting their area.
From the inspiration and initial idea to development and expansion in less than a year, Layoff Lookout (LayoffLookout. com) has seen marked growth as a legitimate company with hundreds of members to date taking advantage of the free sign-up.
An article about the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act) piqued Schwartz’s interest during the beginning of his freshman spring semester at The University of Vermont. This set of overarching federal and varied state regulations requires, with certain qualifiers, employers to publicly report planned mass layoffs well in advance — the key to Layoff Lookout’s business model.
“We saw a gap and we both knew we had the ability to fill that gap,” Goldman said.
In February of 2023, Goldman’s Principles of Microeconomics professor, Allison Roberts, put the Lion’s Cage Competition on his radar. This Shark Tank-adjacent business pitch competition is held as a part of Flagler’s annual Business Week, a unique channel in which the cousins saw an opportunity to expand their ideas on WARN notice uses.
