Waterloo’s Plasticity Labs, cofounded by former NLL Lacrosse player Jim Moss, Jennifer Moss and Lance Mohring, has raised a $2.1 million round of funding from Fibernetics Ventures.
According to Techcrunch, Plasticity focuses on rapid-growth small- to medium-sized businesses, differentiating “through the frequency of its data collection and ‘by focusing on what inspires employees instead of what simply motivates them.’ Plasticity surveys employees once a day, but with questions that only take a minute to answer and then uses that information to create programs that help increase workplace morale.”
Plasticity’s vision is to work with organizations and help them inspire their workforce. “Happier employees work harder, stay healthier, learn more, feel more creative, and generate more revenue for the companies they work for,”
It’s mission is therefore to “transform the culture of the workplace into an ecosystem that thrives off of social learning, connectedness and positive engagement.”
Formerly the startup raised $800,000 in an initial seed round from angel investors, HYPERDRIVE, BDC, The Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems (MITACS), and the Laurier LaunchPad.
The company has grown from one to 12 enterprise customers in the past year, has teams in 11 different countries (and plans to add another 11). Moreover, Moss told Techcrunch that the startup is “is nine months ahead of its forecasted sales and is about to double its pricing model.”
Like any company, there is competition in the marketplace. This comes in the form of human resources information systems (HRIS), companies like Aon Hewitt, which offer consulting and survey services to gauge employe sentiment, and employee rewards programs like Globoforce and Achievers are all gunning for the same customers, noted Techcrunch.
The company was formerly known as “The Smile Epidemic,” after Moss was diagnosed in 2009 with Guillane-Barre Syndrome, a neuro-muscalur disease. Motivated by how two separate nurses could encourage him differently by what they said to him during his recovery, he started the movement. By writing what made him smile, or what he was grateful for on a piece of paper above an image of a smile, the project was born. People from over 450 cities and 200 countries around the globe participated online by taking pictures of themselves holding up a note on what makes them smile.
Eventually this transformed into Plasticity, the integrative tool for companies to engage their workers to a greater degree and encourage a positive working environment.
