This Week @ The Garage SF (6/23)
Good afternoon and Happy Tuesday from The Garage SF! I’m very excited for our conversation with Michael Horvath, the co-founder & CEO of Strava this Friday. A quick reminder to sign-up here if you’re interested in attending and asking Michael some questions.
UPCOMING EVENTS
This Friday, 6/26, 12:30-1pm PST: Virtual Lunch & Learn with Michael Horvath (PhD ’94), co-founder & CEO of Strava. Michael received a Ph.D. in economics from Weinberg College at Northwestern and an A.B. in economics from Harvard College, where he served as men’s lightweight crew team captain. He is a former Stanford economics professor and entrepreneurship professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Prior to Strava, Michael co-founded enterprise software firm Kana Communications and was the CFO and VP of Operations at GlycoFi, a biotech company. Join us to learn about Michael’s journey from teaching entrepreneurship to founding companies and to discuss how Strava has revolutionized the way athletes train by keeping them connected and active in our new virtual world. RSVP here!
JOBS / OPPORTUNITIES
From Lorraine K. Lee (’12): “I’m looking for an Associate Content Editor to join Prezi’s Editorial team, which is focused on building Prezi into a top content destination through content that educates, informs, and inspires. The ideal candidate has top-notch writing and editing skills; the ability to work under and stick to deadlines; a degree in journalism/a related field; and 1-2+ years of experience in an editorial or content role. This person would report directly to me. If you’re interested, you can apply here.”
From Spencer Goodman (Kellogg ’18): “My friend is hiring their first Product Marketing Manager at Afresh, and interested candidates can apply here.”
5 Questions with Mark Fischer (’13), co-founder of Benepass
We covered the funding announcement of Benepass, which was co-founded by Mark Fischer, a few weeks ago. I recently checked in with him to learn more about his entrepreneurial journey and his new startup.
1. How did Northwestern prepare you for starting a company?
“While at Northwestern I was always involved in self-organized projects outside of the standard curriculum. Some of these were facilitated through academic programs, for example I was part of McCormick's Murphy Scholars program, which gave faculty access and funding opportunities to pursue research projects. With a small team of engineers we completed high-altitude testing of commercial photovoltaic solar cells on custom-designed weather balloon payloads, ultimately launching two of them in central Illinois with FAA clearance, and collecting data up to an altitude of nearly 100,000 ft. I also worked on a variety of small startup projects, mostly built around web technology.
While at NU I built web systems to re-sell academic textbooks and advertising for Chicago bars and nightlife venues. And during my senior year while working in the McCormick Additive Manufacturing Lab I started a startup with 3 friends to develop web infrastructure to provide consumer access to 3D printing resources. We were a finalist for YCombinator in 2013 - now, 7 years later, am back doing a new YC company.”
2. What does Benepass do?
“Benepass is building payments technology on modern infrastructure to administer corporate benefits. Employers provide both tax-advantaged benefits (Health FSA's, Commuter Benefits, Dependent Care accounts) and post-tax benefits (Gym Memberships, Work from Home support, Professional Development stipends, etc.), and Benepass consolidates all those systems onto a single payment card to make the administration and employee UX incredibly easy.”
3. What was the genesis of the idea for Benepass?
“I spent 5+ years at Google X working on robotics projects, and for the last year I lived with a group of friends who were all getting their MBAs at Stanford GSB. During that year my co-founder and housemate Jaclyn Chen worked for TeamPay, and identified a big opportunity to bring modern payments solutions to corporate benefits. The incumbent providers use old technology and business models, so the experience is expensive and complicated for employers, and frustrating for employees. Jaclyn had previously worked at Goldman Sachs and TPG, and our 3rd co-founder Kabir was a fellow Googler - all three of us having spent time at big companies and experiencing first-hand how bad the user experience was for the traditional benefits administrators. So we started re-thinking how to build these products from the ground-up.”
4. What stage is Benepass at?
“We are a YCombinator Winter '20 company, and finished raising our seed round in May - the lead was Google's AI seed fund, Gradient. The partner at Gradient who led our round - Darian Shirazi - shares our vision to dramatically improve these benefits products, while collecting payments data that feeds our system for automated administration. By learning on the data we ingest we quickly improve the real-time decisioning on transactions, and can provide a much better experience for both employers and users. The TechCrunch funding announcement is here.”
5. How can the Northwestern community in the Bay Area support you and Benepass?
“We've gotten a reasonably large backlog of customers waiting to onboard, but are always looking for more! Here's the customer pitch: pre-tax benefits are win-win - they save employers money on payroll taxes, and save employees money on income taxes. Benepass charges $0 to administer pre-tax accounts, we just split savings on payroll taxes with the employer. Additionally, the whole world is grappling with the transition to work-from-home, and employers are realizing their benefits systems just don't scale. Benepass is built to specifically solve this problem - using payments technology to give employees flexibility of choice, but adding controls so employers can specify their policy. Very common use-cases we provide include Work From Home setup, Internet & Mobile coverage, Gym & Fitness stipends, Mental Health support, and more - all designed to scale for remote teams. Check us out at www.getbenepass.com, or send me an email: mark@getbenepass.com”
Thanks, Mark!
Until next week, Go ’Cats,
Mike Raab
Director, San Francisco
The Garage
Northwestern University
mike.raab@u.northwestern.edu
323.929.3634
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