Since its founding in 2010, GaggleAMP has not received any VC funding, taking an almost-grassroots approach for gaining their initial funds. “If you take a look at other companies, we didn’t take the typical approach,” GaggleAMP Co-Founder and President Glenn Gaudet says. “Instead, we went our own path.”
The main focus for Gaudet, a first-time entrepreneur, was to find a long-term and sustainable business model that was reliant on the customer. “We wanted to add value to companies while they add value to us,” says Gaudet.
Prior to forming his first company, Gaudet was interviewing for a CMO position at a technology company in the Boston area. When discussing the company’s social media efforts, Gaudet suggested that the company would need to mobilize its employees to create the tipping point needed to break through the social media “noise” that already existed.
That evening, he began researching to see if there was a platform or tool for companies that would do what he had suggested in the interview.
“I thought to myself, ‘I can’t be the only one who has thought of this,’” he remembers. “It turns out I was because I couldn’t find anything related to it. It seemed so simple, yet nobody had done it before.”
Gaudet, who has worked for several tech companies, does not have a development background himself. When trying to create this tool, he initially tapped a few former colleagues but found who Gaudet describes the “right guy at the right place at the right time” Jason Nochlin, who at the time was finishing his degree at Tufts University.
“It felt like the universe aligned when I met him,” Gaudet remembers. “Jason is a brilliant coder, and it’s rare when you can find someone who will invest in something without an initial paycheck.”
Nochlin decided to join and go forward with the development effort and launched the first prototype for the company.
GaggleAMP offers B2B and B2C companies an enterprise-solution that allows employees to create digital engagements and share content on their social networks.
“The problem with companies getting eyeballs to their content is that there is a lot of noise. It can get lost in the shuffle easily,” Gaudet says. “We are helping companies leverage their greatest asset, the employees, to easily participate in the company’s digital engagement efforts. While doing so, the employee builds their own digital brand.”
Employees are given regular digital activities to either act on or say “no thanks”. They can easily populate their own social media networks with well-crafted content from the company and participate in suggested digital engagement campaigns.
The company’s success with their platform can be attributed to offering a SaaS-based subscription. Many prominent B2B and B2C companies have found great use out of GaggleAMP’s services.
GaggleAMP has developed their own internal culture that also focuses on creating engagements with one another. Gaudet describes the team’s core value as “Helping each other with personal and professional growth.” GaggleAMP hosts a variety of events for their employees, from the Ghosts & Gravestones tours seen throughout Boston to taking cooking lessons at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.
However, there is one team-building event that stands out to Gaudet, and it was the company’s retreat to Las Vegas.
“It was great because it started out as a strategic planning session and we finished with some amazing team building events,” Gaudet says. “We flew in our employees on Thursday night and we spent Friday at the local conference center to do our strategy and planning sessions. Afterwards, we got to experience the nightlife. That weekend, we took everyone to an old western town and took an amazing horseback ride in Red Rock Canyon.”
Three years ago, GaggleAMP launched its own industry event called AMPlify. The event hosts people from around that world to share best practices in employee advocacy and engagement.
GaggleAMP is one of many companies in the Greater Boston area building a corporate culture, but have not chosen to go the VC funding route.
Colin Barry is a contributor to VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter @ColinKrash.