And judging by the response to Dunedin-founded startup Givenwell — which has recently launched into Australia — more employers are taking heed of that.
Givenwell is a wellbeing platform launched by Jonny Mirkin in August following two years of research and development. The original idea was for employers to give their team wellbeing allowances in the form of digital tokens.
Employees then accessed a marketplace, where various offerings — which had been curated and vetted — were available and they could spend their tokens confidentially on whatever they chose.
Mr Mirkin said last week the response had been “amazing” and the business had now morphed into providing wellbeing for anybody that would receive benefit from it, including the likes of parents buying tokens for their children heading to boarding school or university, and a gifting option was recently launched.
There was now a team of 10 based in Dunedin and a chief operating officer had been appointed and was moving south from Wellington. While global expansion was planned, the startup’s headquarters would remain in the city.
In the new year, Givenwell would be looking to raise more capital and it was in a fortunate position that it could show “some pretty impressive metrics”.
A board of directors would also be put in place.
He expected Givenwell would become a single wellbeing platform for organisations, replacing health insurance, EAP, wellbeing benefits and other wellbeing resources and apps.
Rather than employers spending money via different budgets, it would only involve one budget and their teams could be empowered to go on a wellbeing journey, he said.
As the founder of tech company Nomos One, which was bought earlier this year by global finance and technology firm EXA Capital, it had been “fun doing it second time round” and utilising the lessons learned from his first startup, Mr Mirkin said.
The positive response had enabled Givenwell to have the early success but that was also attributable to having spent so much time on research and development prior to launch, he said.
