Startup Spotlight #216: Tandem
Tandem empowers startup employees to do and feel their best at work, through mentorship and coaching.
Tandem empowers startup employees to do and feel their best at work, through mentorship and coaching.
Connie is the Founder and CEO of Tandem. She is a former teacher, second-time founder, and graduate from MIT and Stanford MBA.
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Startup Spotlight: Tandem
Problem: The average startup employee’s tenure is two times shorter than in any other industry, and it costs a company 2x the employee's salary to find a replacement. Startups need to increase their ROI on talent by supporting their employees to do and feel their best at work.
Market: Startups currently spend 25B on employee learning and development, with most of that money going towards ineffective solutions like online classes, which have a 10% completion rate. This market size is only growing as millennials and Gen Z enter the workforce and are 17% more likely to choose jobs based on career development opportunities.
Solution: Tandem helps startup teams offer coaching at scale. With a network of 200+ former startup leaders as coaches on the platform, we match startup employees with proven leaders in the field who have been in their shoes before. Startups can set employee coaching goals based on company KPIs to ensure each employee gets the support they need.
Team: Connie is the Founder and CEO of Tandem, managing a platform of 200+ startup experts. Tandem’s angel investors include former Facebook, BetterUp, and Apple executives.
Recent Success:
Liu: Employees who get coaching on Tandem give the platform an NPS score of 80, and 97% report learning skills that they use at work within the next month, if not week. Beyond that, we see the impact on mentees mental health and work satisfaction, helping them shift from overwhelmed to empowered.
Recent Struggle:
Liu: Startups have incredibly volatile budgets, so the appetite for coaching is volatile along with it. However, deciding to work with startups was an intentional choice for Tandem because employees feel overwhelmed most acutely in startup environments, and it is where coaching can have the largest impact. We’re doubling down on working with startups in a stressful and uncertain time when coaching is even more valuable to weather the storm.
Founder Advice:
Liu: Preserve your energy, it’s a marathon not a sprint. I like to say that even more important than financial runway is emotional runway. Founders should put their mental health as the top priority because being creative and strategic about what to do next is impossible when you’re burned out, and trust that what feels short-term slower is long-term faster.
Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Liu: Here are three founders you should check out next!
Irene Liu, Founder of Chiyo: Eastern food therapy meets nutritional science for body, mind & motherhood. Stage & symptom-specific care.
Michelle Xie, Founder of Stellation Care: Stellation is a provider analytics platform for healthcare organizations to enable best-in-class patient-provider matching, network design, and referral optimization.
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