Perks are discounts or benefits offered by companies in different sectors as a reward for belonging to a certain group. Depending on the needs of each company, there are different types that help improve team productivity, attract new talent, or improve customer management through CRM platforms.
From the start of their journey, startups face a number of challenges, such as finding technology partners to innovate more flexibly, building the right team, or designing a product that meets market demand. Perks can help entrepreneurs overcome these and other challenges and drive their high-growth company forward.
What is a perks or value-added services marketplace?
It is a space made up of services for high-growth companies offered through discounts and promotions by players such as incubators or accelerators. Behind these solutions are giants such as Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, which provide platforms to meet technological needs, and others such as Hubspot or Factorial, which help to boost customer relationship management or talent management.
For example, a startup that wants to automate marketing tasks through a CRM platform can go to the value-added services marketplace and find tools like Hubspot with bonuses on the subscription cost.
Where do perks come from for startups?
Perks is a common term in the human resources field. It has become popular to describe those services that help to nurture talent, increase task efficiency, and ensure viability.
In fact, for 35% of startup leaders, including employee benefits and perks is critical to building their own company culture, according to the How startups create a culture of possibilities report. To this end, some of the most common perks startups offer their employees include mental health tools, to reduce anxiety or stress levels, financial wellness, to help improve financial management, or education to learn new languages or career development plans.
Today, perks have been exported to the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a formula that allows high-growth companies to reduce costs, meet emerging needs, and support their scaling process.
Main types of perks for startups
1. Benefits for software and technology startups
For startups, technology is part of their DNA. For this very reason, high-growth companies are looking to support their operations through technology and software solutions in order to adjust their cost balance, increase their flexibility, and innovate faster.
In this group, names such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure Cloud stand out. These companies operate in the field of cloud computing, which refers to those computing resources, such as applications or data centres, that are provided on demand through a pay-per-use model.
For a company, having its services and applications in the cloud brings several advantages, such as the ability to access information from anywhere and from any device, or to expand storage capacity as the startup generates more data.
2. Business development benefits for startups
For many high-growth companies, having a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform is a requirement for their proper development. The aim is simple: to improve business relationships in order to grow the business of a high-growth company.
Through these tools, entrepreneurs can manage and analyse their customer relationships to plan different marketing, sales, or customer service actions. In this area, there is a wide range of partners such as Hubspot, Zoho, or Holded, that provide startups with the necessary tools to help them scale their business.
3. Benefits for startups to improve productivity
In a flexible environment such as that of high-performance companies, productivity and efficiency are key concepts. To help each team reach its full potential, there are a number of platforms that help organise functions and establish development strategies.
Companies such as Asana, Slack, or Trello allow startups to plan all the tasks that need to be completed and to keep all team members working towards the same goal.
4. Benefits for startups in talent recruitment
Talent management is a fundamental aspect that needs to be addressed. This is evidenced by the rise of the HR Tech sector, the term used to describe companies that use technology to manage corporate talent. In 2022, this industry received venture capital investment of $12.4 billion, according to the Global HR Tech Investments and Funding report.
The sector includes solutions such as those created by Factorial, one of the five Spanish unicorns (companies valued at over $1 billion before their IPO), which help high-performance companies find and attract the best candidates.
5. Startup benefits for web design
In addition to having an adequate infrastructure for the proper development of the business, another area that startups pay attention to is the design or how they present themselves to the world.
To this end, the solutions created by companies such as Canva, Visme, or Crello help startups draw attention to their services and showcase their solutions in a more attractive way.
On the other hand, there are also other specialised perks, such as those available to companies that are ready to internationalise, as well as other benefits focused on logistics or networking.
In addition to financial solutions such as venture debt or growth loans, which are designed to help startups grow, access to perks is also a way of helping companies continue to make history.
