When Ayoade (Joy) Ademuyewo, DNP, CRNA, graduated from her nurse anesthesiology program, she found navigating the job market to be a challenge. She didn’t have a deep understanding of the market, and she was frustrated with not having an appropriate technical solution to finding a job.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she realized many Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) had been displaced into the job market. Considering CRNAs are usually in high demand — they administer every type of anesthesia to all types of patients in all healthcare settings — she saw desperation from colleagues in online forums. CRNAs she knew reached out to her to share the problems they were having finding a job.
Her solution? She invented an app.
Ademuyewo is the founder of Lokum App, which functions as a matchmaking engine for CRNA jobs. She’s been a member of the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology since 2015 and is based in Houston.
After sketching out her ideas for the app, she collaborated with engineers in Houston’s tech ecosystem and leveraged relationships with legacy IT companies in the city to bring the first version of the product to market.
“With Lokum App, when CRNAs are in the market for a job, the jobs are applying for us and not the other way around, and that’s really unique,” she said. “That doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
The app helps CRNAs connect to “anything from spot days to ongoing PRN positions to contracts to permanent placements,” Ademuyewo said. “They’re able to set their preferences, and based on their preferences and experiences, the app builds them a personalized job feed and learns from them over time to get the right job to them at the right time.”
Currently, over 3,000 CRNAs, who are also known as nurse anesthesiologists or nurse anesthetists, have signed up for the app, which is free to use and available for Android and iOS devices. Most of Lokum App’s growth has been through word of mouth, Ademuyewo said.
“The profession has organically helped support us. I could not have done any of this, especially as a solo founder, if it wasn’t for CRNAs getting behind the app and really being candid about what their needs are. They’re able to give us feedback directly in the app, and we want to hear from them,” she said.
CRNAs were among the first to back the company as angel investors. Ademuyewo has also raised funding through venture capital, which includes contributions from J.P. Morgan’s Techstars accelerator program.
Lokum App was one of 13 companies selected for the 2024 cohort for the Google for Startups Accelerator Program-North America. Ademuyewo spent 10 weeks developing her company and product, which included a week-long visit to Google’s Mountain View, California campus and access to anyone she wanted to talk to at Google, an experience she described as “surreal.”
“It was a huge deal to be selected and have product developers provide their expertise,” she said. “Google was right there from sales to marketing to product to engineering to compensation data evaluation.”
Lokum App is about to publish a compensation report that was created through its work with the Google program.
“We got our own machine learning mentor at Google. We were able to train AI models on CRNA compensation. CRNAs are the backbone of revenue generation for most hospitals in the United States, and we don’t have the tools to know exactly what our value is in this market,” Ademuyewo said.
Her goal for Lokum App is for CRNAs to have not just a tool to find jobs, but a resource for their journey in the profession of nurse anesthesiology. “We’re working diligently to add more jobs and more resources to the app. We want to be a soft, cushy place for CRNAs to land when they start navigating their careers.”