When Covid-19 first made an impact in Colorado, Zestful founder Mat Vogels was ready for a downturn in business, staying cautious about his company’s next move.
Zestful, a Denver-based employee perk startup, was on stable footing, having raised a $5 million seed round in the fall and touting an ever-growing customer list in the thousands.
At the beginning of May, Vogels said Zestful had seen about 20 percent of its customers postpone or cancel their account due to Covid-19. Despite that drop-off, he said the company’s bottom-line stayed stable, as a host of new customers came on to offset the losses.
“We haven’t really been changed,” he said in early-May. “All of our projections are roughly the same and our outlook is fairly the same.”
While the company’s business has remained steady, customer interest has greatly shifted to accommodate for the current pandemic.
Zestful allows companies to create the perfect perks and rewards program for their employees, without the reimbursement process. Companies can customize which specific products or categories an employee can spend their benefit dollars on, from Netflix and Spotify, to Uber and gym memberships.
Rather than purchasing in-person perks like gym memberships and transportation allowances, customers have prioritized at-home perks in light of the current pandemic.
“Our most popular program before Covid was fitness and health,” Vogels said, with gym memberships accounting for the majority of that spending. “Those have flipped the other way. Now, 70 percent of those fitness budgets are going towards virtual fitness.”
As companies have found more stable footing during this pandemic, Vogels said many customers that left have returned to Zestful over the course of this month.
“Maybe 15 percent or 20 percent of companies that left in March are starting to come back,” he said. “Another piece that is more significant is that budgets are coming back.”
Companies that had paused spending or dialed back perk allowances, have now returned, Vogels said, as Zestful’s customers look to support their employees during this challenging time.
As Covid hit, Zestful was already preparing to move into a new office. The company’s current lease was up in the middle of the month and Vogels was getting ready to secure a new space near Union Station.
When the company transitioned to remote work, Vogels said the office felt like it was abandoned. Coffee cups and sticky notes remained on desks, as Zestful and its 13-person team were understandably unsure of what the future held.
At the beginning of May, Vogels was weighing the company’s future remote work policy. Pre-pandemic, Zestful already had a flexible work schedule, highly encouraging employees to work remotely on Tuesday and Thursday.
By the end of May, he was no longer weighing an in-office presence.
“We’re probably going to be remote-first forever going forward,” he told Colorado Inno this week. “I don’t see us ever going back to a full-time office.”
Vogels said when the dust settles from Covid-19, Zestful will have a small presence in a local coworking space, but won’t be in need of a full-scale office.
“If Covid hadn’t happened, we would be moving into a new office.”
As a result, he said the company will open its hiring radius outside of Colorado, taking applicants from across the country.
“We were already thinking about hiring remote, but for the next hire we won’t care where they’re located,” he said. “There is a lot of talent that is going to become available that we’ll now have access to.”
Had Covid-19 not happened, Vogels admitted Zestful’s path would’ve looked a great deal different and that this pandemic has sped up its remote work timeline.
“If Covid hadn’t happened, we would be moving into a new office,” he said.
In order to keep a connection with its team, Zestful has set a daily coffee meeting where employees are encouraged to play games and disconnect from work for a bit. The company also hosts optional happy hours on Fridays to keep team camaraderie up.
While quarantine has created a lonely and claustrophobic experience for many, Vogels said that the company is finally settling into this new normal. He said Zestful employees have begun taking time off and getting away from their remote workspaces when they can.
“Internally our dust is settling as well, and we have a new grip on this reality,” he said.
Looking forward, Vogels anticipates that this remote workforce will impact Zestful both internally and externally, as its customers increasingly shift remote.
“The new reality is going to be remote, not even for just us, but for our customers that we serve. We always had plenty of customers working remote, but I think now it’s important to make sure we are prioritizing that messaging,” he said.
He anticipates Zestful’s catalogue of perks will shift toward a remote workforce, with virtual fitness classes and other socially distanced activities swelling in popularity.
“We are going to go back to some form of normalcy, but I think the default will be remote-first,” he said. “The same will go for perks. By default we’re going to invest in things that work for everyone, including the folks that are working remote.”
