The early generation of SaaS employee engagement platforms (Glint, CA, Peakon) found their success in replacing legacy consulting providers (who had fantastic services but terrible tech) with faster, better integrated, better designed and more automated solutions. That market was huge and everyone did very well out of it.
Today it is a much more mature market, and as rightly pointed out, a survey platform is no longer enough. But there is still so much room for innovation. Actually improving employee engagement is far from solved or commoditised, and I believe that anyone that can bring an original idea that can be proven to lead to real-world change can still find a place in this industry. Personally I believe that any future success stories are likely to be focused less on customisation and configurability, and more on opinionated takes that suggest better ways to manage and measure employee engagement.
The idea of linking HR initiatives to measurable change is a good one! But it's fairly easy to see that you can extend it to 'events' more widely. Customers don't just care about what HR has been doing; they want to know what impact virtually any event has had on their employees, whether internal, external, global or local. You may have noticed that over the last few years the buzzword 'moments that matter' has become pervasive in our industry, and you can see the majority of providers have delivered some kind of feature to capitalise on this.
One final point is that I would say that the idea that HR is responsible for improving employee engagement is a little dated. I think it is uncontroversial to say that HR does not have the time or resources to actually do anything about employee engagement themselves. The modern role of HR is as enablers, measurers and instigators - undoubtedly a key stakeholder - but ultimately if you actually want to change something then the responsibility has to be more widely distributed.
Disclosure: I was an early hire at Peakon, an employee engagement company, and I ran the ML and DS functions for four years until our acquisition by Workday, where I still work on Peakon today.
As an engineer at Culture Amp, I strongly agree with all of this, especially:
> Actually improving employee engagement is far from solved or commoditised, and I believe that anyone that can bring an original idea that can be proven to lead to real-world change can still find a place in this industry.
OP it sounds like you and your co-founder had good intuition and insights into what the industry needs. But as indeed30 mentions the market is mature, the competition is strong, the expectations of quality and a certain feature breadth are high, and you'd probably need some decent sales skills to get a look in.
Well done on picking a good problem and giving it a shot. As someone who failed a startup at a similar stage, it sounds like you've walked away at a good time, learned good lessons, and hopefully you've got good opportunities ahead.
Today it is a much more mature market, and as rightly pointed out, a survey platform is no longer enough. But there is still so much room for innovation. Actually improving employee engagement is far from solved or commoditised, and I believe that anyone that can bring an original idea that can be proven to lead to real-world change can still find a place in this industry. Personally I believe that any future success stories are likely to be focused less on customisation and configurability, and more on opinionated takes that suggest better ways to manage and measure employee engagement.
The idea of linking HR initiatives to measurable change is a good one! But it's fairly easy to see that you can extend it to 'events' more widely. Customers don't just care about what HR has been doing; they want to know what impact virtually any event has had on their employees, whether internal, external, global or local. You may have noticed that over the last few years the buzzword 'moments that matter' has become pervasive in our industry, and you can see the majority of providers have delivered some kind of feature to capitalise on this.
One final point is that I would say that the idea that HR is responsible for improving employee engagement is a little dated. I think it is uncontroversial to say that HR does not have the time or resources to actually do anything about employee engagement themselves. The modern role of HR is as enablers, measurers and instigators - undoubtedly a key stakeholder - but ultimately if you actually want to change something then the responsibility has to be more widely distributed.
Disclosure: I was an early hire at Peakon, an employee engagement company, and I ran the ML and DS functions for four years until our acquisition by Workday, where I still work on Peakon today.