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Zestful — Customized perks, without the reimbursement process 🍋
Zestful allows companies to create the ultimate perk program, by giving employees a balance to spend on all their favorite products and services (Netflix, Spotify, Airbnb, gyms, food delivery services, charities and hundreds more) - without the reimbursement process!
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Zestful is a customizable company perks card that lets employers set an amount employees can spend on things like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Bird/Uber (a list of pre-approved things employers can manage). It instantly resonated and made me think when I was working for a startup and we had a shared login to The Information, which I appreciated having access to (but would not want to pay for).
It also made me think of how I ended up canceling the free Equinox membership that was included as a company perk at AngelList + a how few months later bought a 24 hours pass and never expensing it. We also had company credit cards at AngelList – which was super cool – but not many people do in their companies. Enter Zestful to solve all of it and more.
Thank you @matvogels for the excellent emoji cold email 🍋
P.S. It took me *way* too long to come up with the wording and take this photo 😅
Hi PH, Mat from Zestful here 👋
Zestful allows companies to create the ultimate perk program, by giving employees a balance to spend on all their favorite products and services (Netflix, Spotify, Airbnb, gyms, food delivery services, charities and hundreds more) - without the reimbursement process!
It's made possible with our Zestful Perk Card, which looks and works just like any ol' debit card, but with super powers. The card only works on the specific products or categories that you allow, and only up to the budget that you set. For example, you could create an Allowance of $50/mo that will only work on Fitness products. You can also "stack" as many allowances as you'd like to create the perfect perk program for you/your company.
The idea for Zestful started with a survey we sent back in early 2018 to thousands of employees across the US, asking them one simple question: Which would you rather have?
- A $130k salary
- A $100k salary + Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Spotify, Headspace, a Meal Delivery Service, a Gym Membership, $20/mo to a Charity of Choice, and a $100/mo Experiences Allowance (Concerts, Education, Airbnb, Travel, etc).
The results were shocking: 80% chose the lower salary with all the perks! But when we took this info back to companies we realized that creating a perk program with hundreds of products, customized so that each employee could get what they want, AND an easy reimbursement process was borderline impossible... Thus the idea for Zestful was born and here we are today!
I'm excited to chat and answer any questions!
@matvogels great website and excellent service idea, but the fact that 80% of people were willing to take a $30,000 salary reduction in exchange for a few hundred dollars worth of monthly perks is a depressing way to highlight the level of financial illiteracy in America
@matvogels @iota I too appreciate the concept, but question the accuracy of these "results." If a respondent was to truly understand this trade-off, I'm confident that 80% would not be so high. The success of Zestful will be dependent upon financial illiteracy, which is sad to take advantage of.
@iota @kleinkleinklein Thanks guys! No one was more surprised than I was with the results, and agree if shines a light on how some ppl think about value/money. I emailed hundreds of folks that took the survey trying to dig deeper on this and why they chose these responses. A lot of the responses were along the lines of, "If I received more in salary it would just go to my bills, expenses, my family, student . loans, etc - but someone giving me the things that I want directly feels more rewarding."
I also think that this survey took some extremes into account. Had this been a $30k salary vs a $70k salary the results would have certainly gone the other way (I'd assume). And in most cases what we see with Zestful is that companies are giving ~$50/mo (not $200+/mo), so our goal wouldn't be to take ppl's hard earned salary, but make it easy for companies to give them access to a handful of apps or services that they otherwise wouldn't spend their salaries on (gym memberships, meditation, local events, etc).
@iota @kleinkleinklein @matvogels the idea is good, but this was a pretty crappy way of explaining the value
Great to see Zestful on ProductHunt!! We can’t wait to roll it out to our top performing PubLoft freelancers.
@pocketfreud This is a whole other area we are excited to explore with rewarding contractors and non-full-time employees. There is so much room here to reward them for their work on top of a typical paycheck.
Overall, Zestful is an awesome solution to employee perks, and we’re eager to continue offering their cards to our core team & top performing freelancers :)
Pros:Super flexible—works for just about anyone’s desires!
Cons:The best improvement: discounts at partners (e.g. 5% off purchases at SBUX with a Zestful card). This will be more feasible as they grow!
The results of your survey that showed employees would rather $100k + perks rather than $130k were extremely interesting! I think it's easy to look at things from a binary perspective: "well, employees end up making less money so they lose on this." From a purely monetary perspective this could potentially be true, but this idea of almost customized and almost "scheduled perks" could really impact overall quality of life. Not only are employee perks a logistical challenge for companies, but they also don't fit the individualized needs of the employees. It's clear that Zestful will allow them to frequent their favorite local gym down the street or pay for their favorite meditation app.
It's the customization that really shows an employee you care about their needs and why these external work activities are beneficial lifestyle/personal health. It's easy to get caught up in day-to-day business hubbub, but there's a lot more to people on any team. Growing and cultivating those interests is important. Really impressed and will be following Zestful closely!
@qwoods13 Wow - thank you! This hits on so many of the points that we are trying to cover. We're not trying to replace "salary", but I do think there is another "currency" entering the workforce in the form of these individualized perks. Be it in the form education, experiences or other personalized rewards. The problem is it's really hard for companies (especially smaller companies) to manage this easily - that's hopefully where Zestful comes in.
@michael_lefco Hi Michael! Yup our card keeps track of everything for you, so you can use it on any product within the Zestful catalog.
@blake_myles Thanks Blake! Zestful is $5/employee per month + 1% of how much your team spends. So for example, if you were a team of 20 and your team spent $1000 over the month in Zestful, your Zestful subscription would be $110.
Cool product, and can see how it solves for offering an engaging program for an ever more diverse workforce (where one size fits all doesn't cut it).
I do wonder why you guys built a catalog and don't just keep it open and categorize the spend in some other way.
Anyway, amazing stuff and keep up the good work!
Halp