Sid Pandiya has been building startups since he was 15 years old. First, he launched a competitive online debate platform, then a news site aimed at fighting media bias. When his third concept, an onboarding software program based on differences in communication styles, flopped in no uncertain terms, he took it as a challenge to figure out a better idea.
This all happened right before the Covid-19 outbreak. Remote and flex working were already gaining ground in certain industries, and Pandiya found himself curious about the culture of atomized office places. Just before millions of knowledge workers scattered to their home offices for years to come, Pandiya was ahead of the game, interviewing hundreds of managers to learn about the challenges that work-from-home employees were facing. What Pandiya found out will probably come as little surprise to anybody reading this now: teams that weren’t gathering in person were struggling to build camaraderie.
“Remote work and being in front of your laptop all the time can get really isolating and boring,” says Pandiya, 22. “People deserve to feel connected to the people they spend eight to 10 hours a day with.” Alongside his cofounders, fellow UCLA classmates Yen Tan, 23, and Andrew Zhou, 22, Pandiya came up with Kona, a software application aimed at making Slack more than a chatroom focused on tasks and deadlines. Kona greets its users every day with a pop-up that asks a simple yet radical question: how are you feeling?
Employees select a red, yellow or green heart, and are encouraged to expand on their response with words that their teammates can see. Fellow workers can commiserate or offer one another help. Managers gain insight into the challenges that members of their team are facing. HR is able to review an anonymized, aggregated version of the data, ideally with the aim to provide solutions. Essentially, Kona shifts the employee satisfaction surveys of yore into a vital, daily conversation. Kona now has 11 full-time employees. The 100-odd companies currently using its services include Equinix, MasterClass and Oyster.
According to one survey, burnout cost US employers $47.6bn in lost productivity in 2022. Even as many offices have instituted return-to-work policies, the splintered workplace that rose up during the pandemic has laid bare the importance of mental health in the office-culture conversation. By incorporating “the squishy, human aspect into work”, as Pandiya puts it, Kona promises a more humane way forward.
“Kona is able to show managers who on their team is struggling in real time, so they can do something about it,” explains Pandiya. “For example, if someone is low on sleep, the manager can say: ‘Dude, just take the day off.’”
According to Kona’s research, companies that use the service have experienced a 5% reduction in employee attrition. “As soon as Kona is put on a team, people say the entire Slack channel just lights up,” says Pandiya. “[Teammates] start talking and supporting each other in the thread.”
While many corporate-run mental health initiatives can seem awkward and even cold, a low-key openness sets the tone of Kona – perhaps because its founders are part of Gen Z, a generation notoriously uninhibited about mental health. “We tried to make it as friendly as possible,” says Tan. “We literally named it after our friend’s dog, man’s best friend.”
Let’s talk about your own workplace experiences. Based on your own challenges getting a business off the ground, what do you think startup founders in their early 20s are also facing?
Pandiya: Imposter syndrome, the feeling that someone more experienced could replace you or do a better job in your role. That feeling is exacerbated when you start hiring people that are much more experienced than you. A year ago, I was writing code and now every single engineer on the team is way better than me at writing code. There’s the issue of, if I’m their manager, shouldn’t I know more than them?
Tan: Given that we are younger [than many other entrepreneurs], we need to be extra careful about delivering a high-quality product that fits a company’s needs, and moving fast to deliver that. I think the pressure is really on right now.
On the flip side, what are some of the advantages that come with being a Gen Z founder?
Pandiya: We’re a lot less risk-averse than members of previous generations. Also, mental health is heavily destigmatized for our generation. We grew up with mental health support in high school and college. We talk about mental health pretty openly with our peers, so we’re less afraid to bring those things to work, and therefore more well-equipped to build a company that’s enabling the free flow of conversation.
What beliefs help you succeed?
Zhou: For me, it’s all about authenticity. The idea that you show up to work for eight hours a day but “life” is what’s outside of work has never really sat right with me. Why would you spend a third of your life working somewhere you have to be fake? I grew up in the Bay Area, and it felt like everything everybody did was to impress somebody else, or to look good on a college application. I got sucked into that mentality and believed that you have to impress people or else you’re not worth anything, until I started working with an incredible executive coach who helped walk me through my past, my emotions and why I have the urges that I do.
Tan: As a trans non-binary person, I’m trying to be a good role model for queer, trans and non-binary founders. Less than 1% of queer founders actually secure funding, so to actually be where I am right now, I know I’m carving out space for more people. That’s really exciting to me. I’m very open about my experience with OCD, so that’s something I’ve been dealing with. I have experienced first-hand the impact that mental health has on work, so being able to help folks experience work in a more empathetic, helpful way just makes a whole lot of sense to me.
What do you hope to achieve with Kona that you haven’t yet?
Tan: You could ask this question at the end of every week and we’d have a different answer. Last year we raised $4m in seed funding but now it’s time to prove this is a scalable product. On top of that, it’s about working to build the best product possible, and add extra features to make sure we are servicing our customers’ needs, such as reducing employee turnover. We want to make sure that everyone is not just playing nice but getting the most out of work – and each other.