Investing in Workplace Wellness Software

Venture Fund M13 interviews with PINATA & Hayday founders Josh Wand, Ian Ferguson, and Fred Kunda


 
Q&A / July 2020

Q&A / July 2020

The workplace, as we know it, has changed. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March, many employees have been forced to adjust to remote workspaces, and essential workers have had to adapt to new ways of working safely on-site in industries like manufacturing, construction, hospitality, and field marketing. 

In many instances, businesses have closed. Others have learned to be agile, strategically, and quickly adapting their business models to meet the needs of today’s new normal.

And that’s what happened with PINATA, a first-of-its-kind software solution for experiential marketing. Even with a solid roadmap in place, the pandemic put a temporary hold on in-store demos, product samplings, and in-person gatherings — all critical components of PINATA’s core product offering. 

But with great challenge comes opportunity. For the PINATA team, this meant leveraging their technology expertise and applying it to an area where it was needed most: employee wellness screening. 

Enter Hayday, an employee wellness screening software that enables employees to return to work safely and, more broadly, tracks and encourages employee engagement. The Hayday software empowers teams to collect critical wellness information and promote a healthy workplace; mitigate legal risk and manage compliance, enforce new protocols around security and on-site traffic; and importantly build trust among employees and customers around their health safety.

PINATA and Hayday founders Josh Wand, Ian Ferguson, and Fred Kunda sat down with Rob Olsen of M13 to discuss how a simple question ‘How are you today?’ sparked a purpose-driven idea that launched Hayday.

Read a snapshot of the interview below and click here to read the full feature:

PINATA’s latest offering, Hayday, is an incredibly timely concept that has the potential to help millions of people get back to work safely. How did the idea first arise? 

Josh: The Hayday story starts with PINATA, our flagship, and namesake application. When we were getting started, we had our sights set squarely on the field marketing industry. But as we built out our solution, we realized that the technology itself could solve a host of problems across many business functions — really anything that involved managing remote or distributed teams and measuring their performance in real-time.

Click here to read the full feature

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