Seattle-based Tribute is trying to give corporate mentorship a modern upgrade.
The startup's peer-to-peer mentorship app allows users to connect based on goals and experiences. The aim to offer a new technology that doesn't lose the personal touch, said founder and CEO Sarah Haggard. The company, which announced a $1.5 million funding round this month, is just 2 years old but already counts Seattle heavyweights Zillow and Remitly as clients.
"We've beat out huge competitors that are much more mature than us and have 100 times the funding," Haggard said. "We're really about solving for the relationship piece of mentoring and building those strong connections, and then everything else follows."
Tribute also recently announced an integration with Microsoft Viva, Microsoft's platform for employee learning, communications and insights. Haggard said Tribute is the only mentorship app currently integrated with Viva, and the integration will give the startup global reach.
Haggard worked with a product designer to mock up Tribute. She pre-sold the app to Microsoft and used the revenue to hire third-party developers to actually build the product. The company, which has a business-to-business model, has 10 clients, according to Haggard. Tribute charges businesses who use its app a subscription fee of $5 per user per month.
Tribute has tried to stand out in the market by keeping its app within the normal flow of work. The app integrates with Teams and Slack. Users can search for mentors and mentees and send messages, and Tribute will guide users through a 30-day mentorship engagement.
Haggard, who has an anthropology degree, readily admits she is a non-technical founder. Before Tribute, she spent more than 10 years at Microsoft, where she worked in product marketing. Although she found great mentors organically at Microsoft, Haggard said formal mentorship programs were disappointing and had a transactional feel.
Tribute now has four employees, including Haggard. The company this month announced Ian Ma has joined the company as chief technology officer. Ma was previously a solutions architect at Amazon Web Services. He also co-founded an e-commerce company called Decide, which was acquired by eBay in 2013.
Haggard said it is hard to put an estimate on how big the company will be in a year, but she guessed Tribute's headcount would at least double in size. She added the company plans to hire in engineering, customer success and marketing. Although Haggard would like to have an office in Seattle, the company works remotely and doesn't have an office right now.
Moving forward, Haggard sees the company becoming a more full-service platform for employees to share knowledge.
"There's so much wisdom, lived experiences and knowledge that is just essentially untapped inside of organizations today because we're not creating the tools and processes," Haggard said. "Everybody wants to help each other. We just need to find a way to do it in a way that doesn't feel like a heavy burden."
Editor's note: The story has been updated to clarify that Tribute is the only mentorship app integrated with Viva, not Viva's only partnership.
