These Hot New Startups Will Help You Work Better
Lots of young companies are helping you and your team get more work done, but not many are breaking new ground. CIX has chosen five work-related startups for its 2016 Top 20, so let’s see what it takes to be considered one of the most innovative get-it-done companies in the country.
Building a Better Bot
Zoom.ai, founded by Roy Pereira, has created Ava, an automated virtual assistant (get it?) that helps you manage your hectic work life.
Ava interacts with you through the communication channels you already use: email, WhatsApp, Skype, Slack, and so on. The bot uses these same channels to communicate on your behalf when you want it to.
Artificial intelligence is only useful if it can keep getting smarter. Zoom.ai’s bot learns more about you the longer you work together, and you can decide how close you want to let it to your personal data. (And, yes, the name “Ava” is indeed a reference to the movie Ex Machina.)
Healthier Health Benefits
League lets your company build and implement a custom health-benefits plan. Oh, and no pushing paper: the whole thing is digital-first, from selecting the elements that your plan will cover, to filing a claim when the time comes.
Founded by CEO Michael Serbinis, League lets an employer pick a pre-set plan with fully insured coverage and flexible spending accounts, or build its own custom plans that meets its team’s needs. Employees, meanwhile, get an allotment to spend on the benefits they really want to use.
Achieving Business Insurance Clarity
Zensurance co-founders Danish Yusuf and Sultan Mehrabi started out helping big insurance companies try to streamline their operations. They then pivoted to the customer side, helping businesses quickly and easily assess their business insurance options.
Zensurance is on a crusade to make business insurance purchasing a simple, jargon-free affair, no fax machines required.
Truly Comprehensive Training
ProcedureFlow, as its name suggests, helps you build a living knowledge base of how your company gets stuff done. Training and mentoring become on-demand resources.
Helmed by CEO Daniella Degrace, ProcedureFlow was born from the tears of customer-support staff, who found themselves unprepared even after a week of by-the-book training. The idea emerged to create a real-life knowledge repository whose foundation was laid by interviews with the day-to-day experts.
Every Day is Payday
Instant focuses on making payroll painless.
So painless that it becomes a selling point for your company: the startup’s slogan is “Make your business an incredible place to work”.
Sort of like how hot dogs come in packs of 10 while buns come in packs of eight, payroll practices have fallen out of sync with modern daily life.
Founded by Ryan Volberg, Kevin Falk, and Steve Barha, Instant sees to reinvent payday, giving employees immediate access to their earnings after each shift or workday. Instant works via a smartphone app and card that can be used in any bank machine.
About Wantoo
Wantoo is a simple, powerful cloud-based platform that makes it easy to listen, analyze, and act on feedback from your team, your customers, or anyone else. Our minimalist, intuitive UI is as friendly to your product team as it is for your customers. We are proud to also be listed in the 2016 CIX Top 20. For more information, visit wantoo.io.