Meet the Founders - BetterSpace
A fast-growing employee wellbeing marketplace focusing on mental health in the workplace.
Put yourself in the shoes of an HR Director, you have a workforce with uniquely personal wellbeing needs and use a benefits system that provides prescriptive wellbeing solutions. Your employees rarely use these benefits and you find providing holistic support to your workforce impossible. Founders Jim Woods and Alfredo Belfiori recognised that organisations needed to change the way they approach employee mental health in order to retain staff, increase productivity and tackle the market failure of the corporate wellbeing enterprise model. So they created BetterSpace. BetterSpace is an employee wellbeing marketplace that provides end-to-end personalisation in an effort to drive lasting change to mental health in the workplace. Since launching in February, Linklaters and Accenture have joined the platform. Read on for our interview with Jim and Alfredo!
Describe your startup in two sentences
We’re on a mission to get holistic wellbeing support to every employee, and the BetterSpace marketplace makes it 10x easier to do that.
What gave you the inspiration?
We wish we could say it’s because we realised B2B marketplaces are going to disrupt every area of business spend, and we wanted to be the first team to apply it to wellbeing. But the reality was a lot more instinctive. When Jim, one of the co-founders, lost his sixth friend to suicide, he wanted to help build a business that could help a lot of people with their mental health. Together, Jim and Alfredo identified the employer as the agent of change.
How did you meet?
We met sitting on a haybale in a random field just outside London. We were both part of Zinc.vc’s Mission 1, and were the first two founders to team up. That’s why we’re sometimes referred to as Zinc’s first love children, cultish though that sounds!
What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
Our biggest achievement has been winning enterprise contracts with Accenture and Linklaters. Both are probably the most progressive employers in their respective sectors, are risk-averse and have high standards for their suppliers... which is why most start-ups don’t go straight for the big players. We’ve found that when you find the right person who deeply believes in what you’re doing, even supertankers can find ways of making things happen. Greatest challenge? We’ve got to educate the market whilst building the new B2B marketplace segment. Most investors will shy away from businesses that need to educate, often for good reasons, and it’s because we believe in the mission that we find renewed energy and patience every day.
What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?
We’re all about helping people build mental-healthy behaviours. Our north star metric is our engagement rate - when we engage people we can educate them on the 6 pillars (literacy ratio) and help them find things they enjoy doing that are good for their mental health (discovery ratio). We typically get 65+ engagement rates, which are very high. In an evaluated programme with Linklaters in 2020 we achieved 94% engagement, a 70% literacy ration and an 81% discovery ratio.
How has Covid affected your business?
It has probably been a net benefit to our mission. Whilst there has been a short term negative impact on mental health for around half of the population, we believe that in the long term the greater awareness of mental health will be more important.
If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
Jim wanted to be a police dog – let’s hope he doesn’t grow up.
Alfredo wanted to be a mechanic or a doctor, has he loved tearing down things
What would you save in a fire?
Jim: A bundle of all the letters I’ve received since a child
Alfredo: Human beings and most of the animals
Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?
Jim: Bob Dylan. At an age when I was searching for the meaning of life, Bob was confusing me with lines like “There must be some kind of way outta here, said the joker to the thief..”
Alfredo: I’m an Apple fanboy, so it must be Steve Jobs for the revolutions in manufacturing, branding and consumer tech. I’ve also been influenced by my grandfather, who managed to absorb the nice aspects of being a super catholic and a mathematician.
What is your happy track?
Jim: “Times Like These”, by Live Lounge Allstars (lockdown version)
Alfredo: “Funky Kingston” by Toots and the Maytals
What are your company values?
Celebrate difference. Inclusion.
What are you most looking forward to in 2021?
Jim: The remote possibility of a holiday in Italy
Alfredo: Italy winning the European Cup