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It occurred to me as I was writing another comment about how much I love ZeroCater that they might be the perfect fit for what I'm trying to build right now. I'

It occurred to me as I was writing another comment about how much I love ZeroCater that they might be the perfect fit for what I'm trying to build right now. I've started validating and getting Beta customers for a personalized perks program where people don't get a set group of company0wide perks, but instead get them personalized to what makes them a happier and more fulfilled person. I've been trying to figure out the catering problem, because I don't actually want to CREATE any perks, but instead partner with people that already fulfill things that would be considered perks. Catering is definitely the one I have the hardest time imagining managing. Is this an appropriate place to ask if anyone thinks ZeroCater would be interested in being the fulfiller for catering for that system and/or they could ask Arram or the appropriate person what they think? (email = tommy@thecityswig.com)

gamblor956 14y ago
That idea sounds exactly like BetterWorks, a Los Angeles-based company that shut down earlier this year. BetterWorks offered companies a way to offer customized perks on a per employee basis by giving each employee an "allowance" to use on whatever combination of perks they wanted. The problem, in a nutshell, was that the idea didn't scale. They needed two sets of salespeople: one for the customers, and one for the perks providers. Customers were difficult to acquire because many were dubious about limited "perks" to a small set of providers. Obviously, this meant that BW needed a lot of perks providers. However, the perks providers were even harder to reach, as many of them had no need to try yet another customer outreach opportunty demanding X% for little to no work. Moreover, perks providers were frequently not the only providers in a particular area, so discounting competition eroded prices, lowering the income realized through this method of customer acquisition, and thus the benefit of using BW.
- tomasien 14y ago
  Yep, we're working on something similar to BetterWorks. I don't want to say publicly what I think about the way that company was run, but their failure is more validation for me (in that they were able to get the model to work at some scale, but not the scale they wanted) rather than a warning. My idea is about creating and managing perks that CAN scale, and using auxiliary businesses to provide them. Since our perks are about things that make employees happy, tangible things are only one subset of the things we're going to offer, and all of those will be provided by large providers acting as partners. Only some select local businesses will be offered for very specific reasons.
- tomasien 14y ago
  That, by the way, is why catering has been so puzzling in this equation. I don't want to organize catering myself for the very reasons you mentioned. I want to have 1 set of sales people: people selling to businesses to offer perks, and then as many scalable partners as possible offering the perks.

gamblor956 14y ago

That idea sounds exactly like BetterWorks, a Los Angeles-based company that shut down earlier this year. BetterWorks offered companies a way to offer customized perks on a per employee basis by giving each employee an "allowance" to use on whatever combination of perks they wanted. The problem, in a nutshell, was that the idea didn't scale. They needed two sets of salespeople: one for the customers, and one for the perks providers. Customers were difficult to acquire because many were dubious about limited "perks" to a small set of providers. Obviously, this meant that BW needed a lot of perks providers. However, the perks providers were even harder to reach, as many of them had no need to try yet another customer outreach opportunty demanding X% for little to no work. Moreover, perks providers were frequently not the only providers in a particular area, so discounting competition eroded prices, lowering the income realized through this method of customer acquisition, and thus the benefit of using BW.

tomasien 14y ago
Yep, we're working on something similar to BetterWorks. I don't want to say publicly what I think about the way that company was run, but their failure is more validation for me (in that they were able to get the model to work at some scale, but not the scale they wanted) rather than a warning. My idea is about creating and managing perks that CAN scale, and using auxiliary businesses to provide them. Since our perks are about things that make employees happy, tangible things are only one subset of the things we're going to offer, and all of those will be provided by large providers acting as partners. Only some select local businesses will be offered for very specific reasons.
tomasien 14y ago
That, by the way, is why catering has been so puzzling in this equation. I don't want to organize catering myself for the very reasons you mentioned. I want to have 1 set of sales people: people selling to businesses to offer perks, and then as many scalable partners as possible offering the perks.