As the coronavirus pandemic sparked The Great Resignation, Kristina Rodriguez recognized a huge opportunity to address the disconnect between companies and their employees.
Little did she know, there was a startup in Louisville working to do just that.
Rodriguez, former head of global sales at Techstars, has joined OrgVitals, an advanced analytics company focused on workplace culture. She is now a third co-founder alongside CEO Charley Miller and Chief Data Officer Dr. Brad Shuck and also was named chief growth officer.
Miller, a serial entrepreneur, and Shuck, a University of Louisville researcher, co-founded OrgVitals (formerly called Unitonomy, which is now the parent company of OrgVitals and GLVVV, an email organization and customization platform) in 2019. It has been focused on visualizing culture data and making sure organizations are equipped to lead with that data, in addition to using predictive analytics to understand employee health outcomes.
"I think people intuitively get this ... we know that work impacts us in a variety of different ways and we know that sometimes work can be really stressful," Shuck said. "What we are not seeing is a lot of evidence-based solutions that help people live better lives as a result of their work, not just showing up for work as a part of what they have to do every day. We're really interested in understanding how we can help predict literal health outcomes."
Rodriguez was the missing third leg of the stool for the Vogt Award-winning startup, Miller explained.
"Brad's background is all things research and data science, focusing on these human outcomes related to work. My background as a serial entrepreneur is all things product and building companies from zero to one," he said. "But at the end of the day, as a product person and as a researcher, we're two introverts that are not sellers. We never had that experience before and we've got something here that we think is really amazing — we just needed help building awareness and getting it out there in front of people."
Miller and Rodriguez had a mutual connection, but knew nothing about each other before their initial conversation. As it turns out, they had an immediate rapport, Miller said, sharing similar sentiments about the prevalent need to help organizations build better environments for their people.
Prior to her role at Techstars, Rodriguez said she had been in startups for 10-plus years and wanted to get back and build in a meaningful space.
"A passion point of mine is making sure people have some level of fulfillment in life, that they're working in an area that really brings them that genuine satisfaction and makes them feel important," she said. "It's human nature to want to be seen and heard right. Charley and the OrgVitals team are focusing on how to make sure cultures of workplaces understand that and entire organizations are paying attention to those individuals.
"We were connected by way of mutual interest and then conversations unfolded into, 'Wait, we could do something together — let's do this.'"
OrgVitals completed a $300,000 preseed round in late spring, which allowed the company to stay in a private beta mode through the summer. Miller said the company is emerging from that this fall and opening the platform up to everyone under Rodriguez's leadership in growth.
Rodriguez, the company's ninth employee, isn't the only new team member at OrgVitals. In August, it hired Patrick Kinsella, its new chief of staff based in Louisville.
Rodriguez is based in New York, noting that the shift to virtual environments during Covid-19 opened up opportunities for people in bigger cities to interface with companies in middle America.
"It's just become more obvious that there is truly talent everywhere and there's amazing startups coming from everywhere," she said. "Through the power of network and digital platforms, it's no major lifestyle disruption to work from New York for a startup in Kentucky. I think you're gonna see more of this coming from everywhere."
