Interview: California Startup: Workers Count Giving Workers Everywhere A Voice

So I’m pretty sure everyone’s been there, you saw a cool job listed in the paper or maybe heard about some cool place to work right? Well then you start working and you realize that everyone is bitching about bad hours, cuts in pay, the boss is a jerk, or maybe you find the exact opposite and everything is great. Well a new California startup called WorkersCount is a resource that allows you to check that kind of thing out.

Co-Founder Myles Suer is in San Diego, he and co-founder Matt Weeks created WorkersCount which is a new mobile check in app that measures worker sentiment (how they feel about work) in the workplace. Weeks tells nibletz.com “It’s fun, safe, anonymous and empowering for workers at all levels. “. It’s a direct to consumer service.

Now let’s get something straight real quick this isn’t just a “bitching” service. They want users of WorkersCount to talk about the good and the bad. There are plenty of people out there who love their jobs and their perks. WorkersCount can be used to gauge a great employer and a not so great employer.

We got a chance to interview Weeks to find out all about WorkersCount and take a break from customer reward, loyalty and engagement startups, for at least a few minutes.

How did you come up with the idea?

We pivoted on this idea from another, more complicated idea we were working on.  It hit us one day that the one pain workers have is that there is no real-time, consumer-provided information about what it’s like to work somewhere.  It’s all monolithic by brand, yet today’s workers are hyper-connected via twitter, Facebook and LinkedIin… tons of information flies around, but it’s hard to sort the signal from the noise.

Briefly describe what you hope the end user will get out of the app/platform

By checking-in daily and engaging in the WorkersCount community, workers will be able to see where people just like them are thriving or struggling. They will be able to validate when their current role or company, warts and all, is the right place for them, or whether they need to start using the WorkersCount system to quietly start to sift and sort, compare and set alerts. All along the way they can see where their friends work and how those companies are comparing. The service is a fun and safe way to give “voice” to workers at all levels, and through the tweets, charts, indices and rankings we produce, they will be able to have real impact in driving accountability and a better workplace for themselves and others.

This is important to understand about our brand and our positioning: we work directly for consumers. This is not something that comes “down” to them from their employers. Thus we are accountable directly to users, not companies.

More after the break



Can employers benefit as well?

Yes, smart employers will start to read our publicly-available aggregated data and understand where they are strong and where they are vulnerable, and find ways to take early action. Eventually our insights will be a competitive asset or an albatross. There will be no mystery… both employees and employers will be looking at the same type of aggregated data across the spectrum of companies. Yes, this means that we are directly impacting the “Reputation” of a company. And that is a powerful place to be as a service provider. So we take this very seriously as well, and have a number of anti-fraud processes in place to keep this fair and transparent.

What is your plan for monetization

We first need to build a trusted brand and establish a large set of daily users and contributors to the WorkersCount community. Along the way we will start to reward users with low-key fun rewards. Frequency, referrals and sharing will be part of the behaviors we’ll reward using services and products from sponsors. For example we’ll have rewards that are relevant and contextual to workers during the workday, such as coffee, break-time vendors, lunch and even casual dining establishments. In April, users are encouraged and challenged to refer lots of their friends and colleagues. In return we will be surprising some of them with in-office pizza parties (via a national pizza company partner).

The service is free to use for consumers. We have several related revenue businesses that I’d rather leave for another discussion. But we’re fully focused right now on building screaming value to workers, that includes great insights, personal empowerment and a lot of fun. There will be many reasons to come back to the app multiple times in a day, and to subscribe to alerts and challenge friends to “games” that involve aggregated company scores.

Bootstrapped thus far. As we grow our user base we will be meeting with angels and seed /VC investors we know. We’ve already started “socializing” WorkersCount with a number of early stage investors and strategic partners.