

AnyPerk (YC W12) Gives Your Startup Employees The Same Perks As Pinterest - tarof
http://www.businessinsider.com/anyperk-2013-3

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MediaSquirrel
You guys do realize that BetterWorks had this EXACT same model and they shut
it down 8 months after raising an $8M Series A from RedPoint, right?

I recommend reaching out to the founder, Paige Craig, to get his insights.

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resu_nimda
Ok, that's one data point. Without further explanation, that's hardly an
indictment of the business model. They could have failed for any number of
reasons.

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ecubed
I seem to remember hearing somewhere that it wasn't a business thing but
instead a founder-disagreement thing for BetterWorks

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gamblor956
BetterWorks and AnyPerk didn't revolutionize employee benefits; they've had
these types of arrangements for decades. All they really bring to the table is
a web interface. Thus, the problem of scale (especially as it relates to
customer generation) matters.

The problem was that the business model doesn't scale. In order to generate
partners and customers, they needed a fairly large sales force. BetterWorks
was simply never able to generate sufficient revenues to make the model work.

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deleted_account
As an employee, knowing this only costs the company $5.00, this wouldn't even
register in my "total compensation" calculations. I mean, it would be like
them sliding the offer letter over the table and saying with a wink, "Annnnnd
we'll buy you a double venti latte _every month_. Unbelievable, right?"

And don't get me started on actually trying to navigate these group buying
offers. Every time I've tried to redeem one you're shunted off to some obscure
buy flow: "Oh, you'll need to talk to our corporate accounts representative,
do you have your company contract id?"

And to get a little meta here for a second: how lazy is ez-pr.com that they
just link to their half-assed Google Spreadsheet. Or for that matter, how lazy
is Business Insider that they just regurgitate this PR crap. And why are we
even linking to this low-effort content?

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jtbigwoo
So this isn't really anything like the employee perks at Pinterest or Google.
This is a group buying discount. It's not a bad thing to offer--I've worked in
big companies and it's occasionally nice to be able to buy discounted tickets.
Nobody should confuse this for a benefit that a company would brag about,
though.

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lnanek2
Yeah, I noticed that too. They describe free food and massages, then they
offer coupons and group buying deals. Didn't even seem remotely the same.

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727374
It's like Tickets at Work, but without a UX stuck in the 90s. This space needs
a shakeup.

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tarof
Thanks for the support, we just redesigned our site! Please let us know if you
have any other suggestions, design or otherwise.

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cloudout
buckets of opportunity to move into the boring but more lucrative space of
pooling group pension plan, life insurance and healthcare costs to
synthetically provide "big corporate" perks.

