Fueling Growth of Breakthrough to Address Employee Life Challenges & Presenteeism Loss
LifeGuides helps enterprises increase retention and recruiting, while reducing presenteeism loss, and enhancing a Culture of Caring. The Company provides a human-to-human network, of trained and experienced Guides, to help employee families through an expanding array of over one hundred Life Challenges.
North Shore Venture Partners (“NSVP”), with this additional $1,000,000 investment, brings its total funding of LifeGuides to $2,000,000, including five prior investments.
HR Technology News: American Workers Putting More Thought into Choosing Annual Benefits, New Prudential Survey Shows
Mr. McDonough, NSVP’s Founder stated: “When I first heard Mark Donohue describe the LifeGuides idea, it grabbed me as a ‘once in a lifetime’ investment opportunity, that I would always regret if not acted on. Although ‘The Uber of XYZ’ is becoming an over-hyped, hackneyed phrase, this company lives up to that potential. With a moderate investment in its proprietary technology platform, combined with the right team, LifeGuides accesses a huge pool of untapped talent, who help people who are hit hard by Life Challenges. The service does not cost employers much, yet delivers happier, heathier and more focused employees. It provides a wonderful extra source of income and meaning to people, who have earned expertise through navigating their own Life Challenges. I have been slowing adding my investment over two years. Now that a diversely skilled team and initial Guides network is built, the service is rolling out, so it is time to double my investment. LifeGuides has a huge head start in what will inevitably be a global business. It is run by a small, highly talented crew, poised to marshal a huge global impact.”
Mr. Donohue, CEO & Founder, noted that: “It is such a pleasure to have Mark McDonough backing another one of my ventures. We have a strong history of him backing me for 18 years.” NSVP’s funding accelerates our growth and brings LifeGuides closer to our planned Series A Preferred financing in 2020.
Mr. Mc Donough with be joining the Board of Directors with prior investors Will Bunker, Founder of Match and Partner at GrowthX, and Derek Lundsten, Founder of Scrimmage, the e-learning platform used by much of the health care industry. All Board members are passionate about scaling business models that foster “Doing Well, While Doing Good.”
HR Technology News: Rise People Launches Free Payroll Offering in Quebec
Mr. Lundsten stated: “We are excited to welcome Mark McDonough to the Board and into our community of proven investors and successful entrepreneurs, who are aligning around LifeGuides as a rapidly scalable enterprise, which is accelerating Business as a Force for Good.” Mr. Bunker added: “The LifeGuides model, of matching a person who has successfully navigated a Life Challenge, to someone in the midst of that same Life Challenge, is pure genius. This model provides a Unique Value Proposition to all the three sides of the platform: the Client (Employee family), the Employer, and the Guide.”
Mark Donohue, the Founder, added: “LifeGuides is expanding rapidly to serve the under-addressed ‘silent suffering’ in the midst of every employee group. Most HR benefits simply address a crisis or diagnosis, but in the middle, people are living their lives, and all too often are overwhelmed and feeling alone. We help fill the gap. We provide the most human of solutions. Enterprises are further motivated, to buy LifeGuides, by the fact that ‘presenteeism loss’ is estimated at 6-10 times absenteeism loss. LifeGuides can and does make a difference. We invite all employers to partner with us, as we strive to hit our goal of reducing struggle for 1B globally within 15 years.”
Life Challenges are Inevitable. At times, everyone needs experienced and personalized Guidance. This is a peer-to-peer model based on shared Life Experience, and LifeGuides is foundationally based on a breadth of “social determinants of health” research. We use technology to optimize human connection, as opposed to trying to replace humans with bots or algorithms.
Life Guides represents the next stage of the sharing economy. Bigger than homes or cars (Uber or Airbnb) is the value of our Life Experience, Empathy and ability to Guide each other. What was needed is an effective matching system and a managed platform — to overcome the fragmentation of modern society, as one tries to find a match when you need experienced, caring guidance.
To achieve success, LifeGuides must offer a compelling value proposition to drive adoption by employers. Now, employee families need never feel alone again. As the Company’s tagline states: “Navigating Life Challenges Together.”
HR Technology News: CAC Represents Best Practices Staffing In Sale To PeopleShare