The way we work, communicate, and collaborate has changed. The pandemic took concepts like remote and flexible working, asynchronous communication, and work/life balance—and forced us to make 10 years of progress in a matter of months.
It might not feel like it, but we’re still in the early stages of this wave of change. Pandemic-induced work-from-home was just the beginning.
Tens of millions of people have now been experiencing the highs and lows of “the new world of work” and they’re asking: “What else is possible? Couldn’t this be better? Why are we still doing things this way?”
For me, those questions are the most exciting thing about Workbounce—we get to build a part of what comes next. Not just with our products, but also with our own ways of operating.
After announcing our $2.7M seed round led by Index Ventures, we’re building our team with the intention of creating a better kind of workplace. One that questions the outdated notions of 9–5 office-based work and finds new ways to help every individual flourish.
We want to lead by example and build a new blueprint for what work can look like. Our ever-growing list of vacancies can be found here. If what we’re doing appeals to you, please get in touch (and if you don’t see a position that fits, email us anyway).
Building a new kind of company, for the better 👷♀️
Rowan and I met five years ago at Peakon (acq. by Workday) where we led Go-to-Market strategy and Revenue Operations from Series A. It’s there that we both encountered the challenges faced by customer-facing teams, and struggled to find good solutions on the market.
But our time at Peakon didn’t just give us our idea for a product. As an Employee Engagement startup, Peakon was at the forefront of great employee experiences—radical transparency, industry-leading DEIB initiatives, progressive maternity/paternity policies. What we really took from our time there was an appreciation that work could (and should) be different—all you needed was the mindset to continuously ask “How can we make this a great place to work for everyone?”
With Workbounce, we’re able to apply this mentality ourselves from day one—while combining it with our strong belief that the corporate 9–5 is a thing of the past.
Fully remote and asynchronous 👩💻
This means we’ve made the decision to be fully-remote and asynchronous from day one. The last two years have demonstrated beyond doubt that we don’t need to be in the same room as our colleagues to get things done.
We believe the freedom to choose how, when and where to work allows us to make room for other nourishing parts of our lives like friends, family, hobbies and travel. And this gives us the energy to do work we can truly be proud of.
It also gives us the opportunity to work alongside talented people from all over the world—without being limited to one or two cities where we have an office. With a remote setup, we all benefit from greater access to diverse opinions, experiences, backgrounds and beliefs—and our working lives are much better for it.
Our operating principles 👩⚕️
The caveat of remote and asynchronous work is that, while we have the freedom to fit our jobs around our lives, communication isn’t as simple as it would be if we were all in the same room.
In an office, peering over your monitor to ask a colleague for a helping hand or a second opinion is instinctual. In a remote team, methods of communication and collaboration have to be more intentional—as well as more respectful of each other’s priorities.
This is why we’ve taken care to lay out our operating principles at such an early stage.
Most people will be familiar with “company values”. However, we believe these can be vague and difficult to put into practice on a daily basis. Our operating principles give us clear guidelines for working together with care and intention. They cover how we work collectively, efficiently and sustainably—and you can see what we’ve already put in place here.
These principles will be an ever-evolving document. We’ll no doubt experience growing pains during various stages of our journey—and as we do, we’ll update our principles to reflect the lessons we learn, and solutions we develop, as a team.
Our benefits 💝
When we started Workbounce, Rowan and I were also clear with each other that we wanted our benefits to reflect our own values, as well as set the standard for what a seed-stage company can offer.
Remote-first, flexible working is the cornerstone of our setup, and alongside that, we’re implementing:
🏖 Unlimited holiday with a three-week minimum
We believe there’s no benefit in keeping a tally of time off, so long as everyone is respectful about completing what they need to get done, and not leaving any teammates in a difficult position. (We also know some people have a tendency to not take enough time off—so we’re enforcing a mandatory minimum)
🧘 Mental health support: 24/7 EAP and free access to therapy
We believe that nothing is more important than our mental health. We want to support any team member through any challenges they might be experiencing
👪 Twelve weeks paid parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child
We believe that family is more important than work, and no one should miss out on those first few months together
🌱 Monthly carbon offsetting for each employee via Gold Standard projects
We believe we have a responsibility to protect the environment, for the benefit of ourselves, other communities and future generations
🏥 Health insurance
We believe that access to healthcare is a fundamental right
🏆 Employee share plan
We believe that, if Workbounce is successful, then everyone who contributed should share in that success
💻 Top-of-the-line equipment and a home office/coworking office stipend
We believe a comfortable work environment is an absolute necessity—no expense spared
🛳 Team offsites around the world (every ~4 months, pandemic permitting)
We believe in the power of human relationships. With a remote-first team, it’s vital that we invest in spending time together, to work, relax and build empathy
But this is just v1, and we could be missing something that’s important to you. If we are, we’d love to know (message us at [email protected])
Let’s work together 🤝
The earliest hires in any team are instrumental, and the big draws of a startup are the autonomy to carve out your role and the opportunity to make a significant impact. As you can hopefully tell, we want to offer more than that.
Autonomy at Workbounce is not just the ability to own your work and define your role—it’s the autonomy to shape how you work around the kind of life you want to live.
Opportunity, to us, is about more than individual successes—it’s about challenging outdated notions, pioneering new ways of working together, and building something that benefits others as much as ourselves.
Rowan and I are committed to figuring out how Workbounce can be a force for good—for our team, our communities, and the wider world. There's a lot of bullshit in startups about “making the world a better place”. We're building enterprise software, not saving lives, and that's ok. But we can and will find ways to give back and support initiatives with investments of company time and money. And the more successful we are as a company, the greater the impact we can make.
So if you’re the kind of person who’s excited to challenge old ideas and lead by example—while being part of a team that puts benefitting people at the heart of everything it does—then please check out our vacancies. We’d love to redefine how people work, together.