Quan raises $1.15M from YC to tackle post-pandemic employee burnout

With post-pandemic burnout on the rise, the shift to remote working, and the ‘Great Resignation’ now passing into the lexicon, companies are struggling to hold onto talent.

Culture platforms like Culture Amp and Glint were built for a different era, offering insights and reports to HR, but many are less tailored to 2022. And employee well-being is still going up the agenda.

New startup Quan has raised $1.15M in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator, along with a Netherlands-based impact fund and several unnamed angels to address the gap between engagement surveys and well-being perks.

The first female-led Dutch startup to be accepted into YC, founders Arosha Brouwer and Lucy Howie say they researched the issue with doctors, psychologists, and therapists to identify over 20 sub-dimensions of well-being underpinned by more than 200 predictors.

Quan launched its beta product in March 2021, and says it is now working with 12 organizations, over 1,000 paid users and a platform engagement rate of 88%.

Brouwer told me: “For far too long, players in the ‘people and culture platforms have been measuring ‘employee engagement’ and ‘employee experience’ without providing ways to effectively manage well-being and linking it directly to business metrics. Hence the reason why issues such as burn-out and toxic corporate cultures have been trending in the wrong way. Quan knows that to effectively fix a social problem we have to make it a financial problem (or incentive) too. The cold hard truth is we get companies to care about their employees when they can directly measure how it impacts their bottom line.”

Quan is now offering a free access trial for company leaders.