After traveling to 21 countries on a quest to understand what motivates people and brings them joy and fulfillment, Marius Ciupe returned to Romania with a mission to bring his contribution to the less addressed part of people’s lives ㅡ the sense of community and purpose.

Working on transnational projects that impact the lives of millions of people every single day, alongside brilliant colleagues, can sometimes turn out not to be enough. This was the case with Marius Ciupe, who used to work for both Fortune 500 companies and fast growing startups for almost 10 years, in 4 different countries. 

When he stopped to figure out what was missing, he realized he wasn’t alone. More and more people find themselves in this situation in the last years, and the number in growing. 

In the professional life, engagement consists mainly from 3 parts:

• Career (efficiency, development, autonomy) – the core of intrinsic motivation;
• Community (trust, recognition) – the feeling of belonging and connexion;
• Purpose (positive impact in the society) – the source of pride and fulfillment.

If the basic needs are not satisfied (for example, an equitable salary at work equals survival in the personal life), it’s really hard for a person to focus on anything else. In order to get to the top of the pyramid the needs at the lower levels have to be satisfied first.

Five partners, old high-school and university colleagues, have teamed up to create See You There ㅡ an app that helps employees become a part of the community at their jobs, while offering them inspiration and a strong sense of purpose, that was part of the KPMG Startup Grow Pad program. Even if they work from different cities located in France, the Netherlands and Romania, they are a truly united team with complementary skills in team management, development, sales and finance.

Marius Ciupe, company’s CEO, has kindly shared some insights into what they’re doing at SYT.

The problem

About 10% of European employees are actively engaged at their workplaces, while the US has 3 times as many – 33%. Romania is somewhere in between, with 22% (Gallup study 2018). The number can go up to 70% in some of the best-performing companies, so there is definitely potential for improvement in this area.

The low engagement rate due to productivity translates into a loss of around $500Bln for Europe. The number can reach €100Bln in some countries alone, like France, or Germany.

SYT is addressing 2 core human needs: the need for belonging and to have an impact. These 2 are directly correlated to the engagement rate. The product encourages interaction between colleagues that share the same interests, passions and values.

Inside the app, people can organize, or receive suggestions for, real life events inside the company, that correspond to their specific interests. To tackle the sense of purpose and fulfilment, SYT can integrate volunteering events organized by established foundations and NGOs. This can contribute to the development of an ongoing community-building process across teams and departments, strengthening the corporate culture from the bottom up. 

One of the main features is a powerful dashboard that provides relevant statistics about the employee engagement in the activities, which translates into pain points and potential problems to address for the HR teams and managers.

The clients

Usually, large companies are already implementing different ways to engage their employees, SYT.app can be a great addition to what they are doing and, in some cases, it can provide a more structured approach. We are focusing now on companies and corporations with 500+ employees, especially those that have already a good branding and are attractive for the employees that are looking for the components at the top of the pyramid of needs: community, impact and purpose.

Another direction we are exploring is partnering with strategy and HR consultancies. Aside from being a great tool for employee engagement, SYT.app has proved to be extremely useful during any merger, acquisition or major transformation in a company.

When addressing large organizations, we aim to:

• Simplify and accelerate the integration of new recruits 
• Encourage the cross-department collaboration and knowledge exchange 
• Stimulate innovation and boost productivity 
• Increase trust in their peers 
• Empower the employees to be actors of the CSR strategy 
• Improve the employer branding (great work environment & socially responsible enterprise) 
• Decrease the likelihood of employee turnover 

Biggest challenge

Almost anyone can build an app, or any other product for that matter. Getting to sell that product can prove to be a lot more difficult. If you get to the point where you have recurrent customers it means your product is solving a real-world problem better, or more efficiently / cheaper that the other options existing on that market.

For a startup to survive and grow into a sustainable business it needs to sell its product consistently. This transition from the startup phase to the “real business” was one of the biggest challenges we have faced, but it also taught us the most valuable lessons.

KPMG Startup Grow Pad

Aside from the fact that there was no equity in exchange for entering the acceleration program, the major argument for us was the possibility to work with a large consulting company that has a diverse array of clients and expertise. It was easy to make the decision to join the KPMG Startup Grow Pad program. 

The biggest benefit we had during the time spent in the program was the possibility to test the app directly with KPMG employees. Some of the best KPMG experts have helped us define our sales pitch, adapt certain functionalities and have consulted us on legal documentation (contracts, GDPR, etc).

Being a part of KPMG Startup Grow Pad also gave us access to startup conferences and the opportunity to meet other people with similar passions, or problems to solve, on top the very practical aspects.

Future plans

After the KPMG Startup Gro Pad Demo Night, we were accepted into the Paris Landing Pack accelerator, part of the Paris & Co – the largest French accelerator, and we also signed our first client – Medtronic.

After the initial development and pilot, we are now in a consolidation phase, focusing on organic growth and attracting more clients in both France and Romania. Although there is a huge HR market for employee engagement solutions, there are several other competitors with relatively similar approaches to SYT. Our unique selling point is the mixture of functionalities targeting both the needs for community and purpose.

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See You There was part of the 1st edition of KPMG Startup Grow Pad program, alongside Nifty Learning, iFactor, Jobful and Box2M. KPMG Startup Grow Pad has an ongoing application process and startups can apply to join anytime during the year.

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