Spencer Fry, CEO of Uncover

Have you ever put your heart and soul into a company and wondered why your efforts seemed dimly appreciated? Or, are you an employer looking for ways to show your employees you are thankful for their hard work while improving lines of communication? Since it can seem simple to purchase a stack of gift cards, Uncover has established a novel way for employers to give customizable rewards. From their website you can, “Customize what to offer from ten categories, including: Music, Books, Cleaning Service, Coffee & Tea, Experiences, Fitness, Food, Movie Tickets, Transportation, and Video.”

Uncover’s CEO Spencer Fry is a millennial creating a niche market withing a growing industry. He is not only driven, experienced, and unique, but his background serves as a path to take note of for budding Sweet Lemon entrepreneurs. Continue reading for how he started Uncover, and his advice for Sweet Lemon readers.

Sweet Lemon Magazine: What led you to the creation of Uncover?

Spencer Fry: Before co-founding Uncover, I started two companies (TypeFrag and Carbonmade) and part of my responsibility at both was handling Operations and Culture. Even though I was the CEO of both businesses dealing with everything from product to sales, my favorite part of the day was the time I got to spend with my employees. No matter whether it was discussing how we’d implement a new feature or grabbing iced coffee during the late afternoon and talking about last night’s episode of Breaking Bad.

Having an open line of communication was very important to me. I cared a lot whether they felt comfortable saying whatever was on their mind, ad whether they were truly happy with their job. I realized from very early on that if you had happy employees that they’d be better at their jobs. The problem was that it was very time-consuming to keep up with everyone and to ensure that they were happy. I wanted a product to assist me -– not to replace my iced coffee chats but to supplement them. This is where the idea of Uncover came from. When I couldn’t find anything in the market to help me, I decided to learn to program so that I could build it.

Sweet Lemon Magazine: How did you come up with the company name?

Spencer Fry: The idea behind the name Uncover is that we want to help companies get insight into how they can be better employers for their employees. Then by uncovering where they can improve, we can help companies better their relationships and communication with their employees.

Uncover in its literal sense is to “discover something previously unknown” (it’s a literal translation of the Greek aletheia, which means “disclosure of the truth”). It’s our goal to help employers have nothing unknown between them and their employees.

Sweet Lemon Magazine: What makes your business model different from other “rewards” companies?

Spencer Fry: We don’t see ourselves as your everyday rewards company. While being able to offer perks and rewards to your employees is a core feature of Uncover, we see those features as an extension of our broader mission to improve your relationship and communication with your employees.

While other perks companies offer discounts for products that most employees don’t bother to redeem, with Uncover an employee receives the entire product or service paid for by their employer. 85% of the employees of employers using Uncover redeem their perks over 85% of the time. I’ve spoken to employees using other perks companies and their rates are around 5% of employees. That’s a drastic 80% difference.

We do not believe that discounts are effective in improving employee happiness. There’s a difference between “here’s a discount” and offering something special. Uncover is completely customizable to your company’s culture and not simply a digital coupon book.

Sweet Lemon Magazine: How did you decide upon the eye-catching design for your site?

Spencer Fry: The four of us working on Uncover all come from a consumer web development background. Design and ease of use are essential to successful consumer web services, and we know that enterprise services tend to be suffer in those areas. They’re often poorly designed and lack human feeling.

We wanted to bring our experience designing and developing consumer web applications to the enterprise area. We believe that great user experience, design and feel will help our cause in trying to shake things up in the enterprise world.

Sweet Lemon Magazine: Who/What is your target market?

Spencer Fry: Our target market is any startup as small as one or two employees to companies much larger, with hundreds or thousands of employees. We believe that our target market is less determined by the size or field of the company rather than by whether the company is ready to turn its attention to uncovering the needs of their employees. Are they ready to do what it takes to improve their relationships and build a strong culture?

We have already received dozens of emails from companies using Uncover to the effect that our product is helping them make a difference. Seeing that their employees care makes those employees happy and more productive.

Sweet Lemon Magazine: What does the future hold for Uncover?

Spencer Fry: We are really excited about our future. We have a major update coming before the end of 2013 and are very much looking forward to getting it in our customers’ hands. From the conversations we’ve had with our current customers about it, they’re all very excited about how it will help them improve their company.

As we continue to improve our product and built upon what we’ve learned since launching in April 2013, we’re also focused on educating the world about how to build a great company culture. We’re really focused on giving companies practical ways to improve themselves through employee relations rather than simply talking about it.

Sweet Lemon Magazine: Do you have any advice for Sweet Lemon Readers on unleashing a startup?

Spencer Fry: The great thing about launching a startup is that there are a million different ways to be successful. What works for someone else may not work for you and vice versa. On the flip side, there are equally as many ways to fail as there are to be successful. The odds are stacked against all of us.

The best general advice I can give Sweet Lemon readers is to get your idea out in the world as soon as possible. What you’ll learn from a product or service that’s in the hands of customers is so much more beneficial to you than waiting until your product is perfect before releasing it.

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, provides my very favorite startup quote to this effect: “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” The beauty of the Web is that everything is editable and you can change, play with, and shape your startup with relative ease. Get it out there, gather customer feedback, and improve it.

It has truly been an honor and a pleasure to interview Spencer. We looking forward to hearing more about the growth of Uncover.

Spencer Fry is the Co-Founder & CEO of Uncover, everything you need to start and run an employee recognition program for your company. Previously, Spencer co-founded and was the CEO of ten year old TypeFrag and seven year old Carbonmade. He’s been an entrepreneur his entire life, having moved to New York City after founding TypeFrag in college at Yale University. His hobbies include squash,soccer, cooking, music and art. You can follow Spencer on .

By Katrina Manning