Talent acquisition has emerged as the biggest challenge companies are facing around the world right now. Even when companies manage to find and retain talent, they struggle with offering them the right benefits. For decades, the benefits offered by companies have remained the same while the workplaces have become flexible.
With work and life becoming interconnected in the post-pandemic world, there is a need for flexible workplace benefits as well. Amsterdam HR tech firm YourCampus sees flexible employee compensation as the future and has a solution.
End to one-size-fits-all employee benefits
The idea of YourCampus stems from deep frustration for its founder and CEO Florian Gendrault, who did not see the benefits offered to him by his employer fit his needs. While working at various startups and scaleups, he noticed that everyone received the same benefits from their employers.
“My colleagues were of all sorts of ages, with different interests and different needs. Why were employee benefits then still one-size-fits-all? That just did not make sense to me,” he says.
Two years later, Gendrault decided to take a leap and turn his idea of flexible compensation or benefits into a tangible business. Some ideas take years to reach fruition and YourCampus is one such example. The employee benefits platform was “born out of the vision to build a virtual campus with location agnostic, personalised well-being, lifestyle, mobility and financial services connected to it.”
Gendrault adds that YourCampus is now being used by employees on a daily basis to access their benefits. “Recently we added flexible compensation programmes and we’re
developing more features based on demand from our clients,” he notes.
To support its ambition to make flexible compensation and benefits normal in the industry, YourCampus has raised €3.2M in pre-seed and seed rounds so far. The Dutch scaleup relies on a SaaS-subscription model where employers pay a small fee per employee, per month to use its platform. It also offers different packages tailored to different types of companies. For companies looking to budget only for well-being or learning and development, YourCampus has an offering as well.
Adventure over financial security
The story of Gendrault and how he made YourCampus a reality will serve as an inspiration for a number of entrepreneurs. He traded a well paying job to take the risk of starting a company that aimed to fix a flaw that most employers did not even bother to change.
He literally traded financial security for an adventure. “I had bought a new apartment in Amsterdam the year before, and made two angel investments, so I didn’t have much savings to lean on,” he says.
To make his dream of YourCampus a reality, he decided to save money quickly by staying with his parents for six months. “My savings, a bit of salary from the pre-seed round we raised and an adjusted lifestyle, gave me comfort to start the company,” he adds.
Apart from risking his financial security, Gendrault says he found the fundraising process to be a major learning for him. “The process of defining your ideal investor(s) profile, adjusting your pitch deck on a daily basis, pitching to VCs, overcoming objections and negotiating,” he says of the intricacies involved with fundraising.
In an entrepreneur’s life, all these challenges are intertwined with the need to also keep building and growing the business. Gendrault says, “It’s probably the biggest challenge I’ve experienced in my career.”
Rise to map the growth path
YourCampus joined nine other Dutch scaleups for batch #9 of Techleap.nl’s Rise programme this year. With only 30 percent of the programme completed (at the time of this interview), Gendrault says they have “walked away with concrete knowledge of the type of people we need for the phase we’re going in, as well as what to think about when expanding to a new market.”
He says they joined the Rise programme because of all the other participating startups and scaleups, and adds that the coaches and the community overall add value. “It’s not only inspiring but also super helpful,” he explains.
YourCampus is in the stage of growth where it faces challenges that others have faced. With the Rise programme, the founders have already had two successful sessions around the topics of talent and expanding internationally. The founders now believe “they are well positioned to map their own path.”
From flexible work to flexible compensation
For far too long, the compensation and rewards programmes have been designed with the employer in mind. They have never been aligned with the needs of the employees, YourCampus is on a mission to change that. With a team of 24 employees operating via a hybrid and remote work scheme, YourCampus aims to compensate one million people “based on age, stage of life, and interests” by 2025.
“We are currently in execution mode, and will decide later this year if we will fund our own growth or use capital from existing or new investors,” Gendrault tells us.
While he acknowledges that assembling the core team has been “easier than having to recruit someone in the market,” they did need some time and introductions to find Ruben van den Boogaard, who comes from the world of benefits and compensation. “We basically saved one year by bringing his learnings to the company,” he adds.
However, the first real hire for YourCampus was a UX designer with experience in branding and media design. A designer, according to the founder of YourCampus, has a positive impact on overall branding and product design, which also helps define how the market perceives you.
With a strong team and a capable leadership at the centre, YourCampus wants to improve the well-being of employees with the right compensation. Apart from being profitable, Gendrault wants to see YourCampus have an engaged and loyal team and one whose customers and users recommend it to new customers. For him, that’s the real sign of success.
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