CEO Corner: Company Update & Funding News
By Paige Craig
A mere six months ago, BetterWorks was a big idea backed up by a few powerpoint slides and the dreams and ambitions of our nine person team. We aimed to "Make Work Rewarding" for the nation's six-million small & medium businesses: our goal, to deliver an online platform where any company could quickly and affordably reward, recognize and take care of their most valuable resource: their employees.
In six rapid months we rolled out our product, iterated with a dozen alpha clients and delivered our solution across 130+ companies in Los Angeles and San Francisco. We signed up 12,000+ employees and a couple thousand merchants and along the way we turned a big idea into a working product impacting the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. Simply put, we built a product that solves a real problem and is backed by a sustainable business model that delivers real revenues.
U.S. companies spend over $3 Trillion dollars on benefits, perks and employee rewards and recognition - we're going to help them spend that money better and make the workforce happier and more productive.
Today's $8M funding announcement marks a significant turning point for our young company. We have moved rapidly from "good idea" to "working product" and are now entering the earliest days of growth across the United States. We greatly appreciate the massive vote of confidence from Redpoint and our angels, but the funding dollars are the least exciting part of the story.
While these funds allow us to quickly expand to the next twenty biggest cities in the US and expand our team to 80+ people, the most exciting part of this story is the man who joins us and the team behind him: Satish Dharmaraj and Redpoint Ventures.
We spent six months telling everyone we weren't ready to take funding...that is until Satish and the Redpoint team appeared. The first time I met Satish we ended up talking for almost twelve hours straight. He understood what we were doing and I could see that flash of "holy crap I get it" look; he believed in the team and the product; and he had the experience, passion and wisdom we wanted in a partner. He came to us as a fellow entrepreneur - someone who's been there and done that and the entire team was willing to let us swing for the most distant fences. This partnership and this new member of our team excite me most.
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