SAP Startup Spotlight: RandomCoffee

RandomCoffee offers a SaaS solution that helps bring employees together. It is a web application that makes it easy for employees to discover and get in touch with new colleagues across their organization. In this interview, we take a look at what RandomCoffee has to offer and what’s next for the company.

E-3 Magazine: How does your solution work?

RandomCoffee: Employees can make the most of RandomCoffee in two different ways. They can benefit from automated programs set up by admins – most of the time in HR or internal communication departments – who set up introduction campaigns with specific matching rules that fit the business needs (e.g. match different floors, match marketing and sales). Employees then regularly receive intros to new colleagues right in their mailbox. They can also directly ask for an instant match to a colleague. They target the type of profiles they would like to meet, give a bit of context, and RandomCoffee automatically introduces them to the most relevant colleague.

What are the customer-side requirements?

RandomCoffee: There are almost no requirements to get started, apart from having an up-to-date list of employees with the data you may want to use to connect people. Advanced integrations are possible for teams with more individual needs.

Why did you start RandomCoffee to begin with?

RandomCoffee: We (the founders) worked in a fast-growing startup and we realized it was hard to keep up with the turnover and keep an overview of who was doing what. It was frustrating both personally and professionally, and we started to build a small tool that would help us connect with people in an informal way, adding a layer of intelligence to make sure we would meet people we don’t usually interact with. It was a great success, and we soon decided to launch our own company to offer it to other companies.

How could your solution potentially help customers navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and the different challenges of reopening?

RandomCoffee: We’ve seen an explosion in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic, as employees are struggling to maintain a sense of informal networking and connect with everyone spread out and working from home. We worked hard on RandomCoffee to give more power to employees to enable them to use our solution as a simple and efficient way to keep in contact with colleagues and form new relationships directly from their home. It also proved useful when some offices reopened, as companies were looking to foster real-life interactions to catch up after months of people being separated from each other.

How has SAP.io’s involvement impacted your journey?

RandomCoffee: SAP.io had a tremendous impact by helping us better understand the employee journey and forcing us to rethink how we interact with our end users. We went from having an admin-focused, tailored solution to an end-user focused, scalable solution that gives much more power to employees.

What’s next for RandomCoffee?

RandomCoffee: We’re hoping to become the reference for networking at companies, focusing on connections and relationships rather than on content, posts, or work-related initiatives which today are the main ways companies are thinking about digital social experience at work.

Thank you for the interview.

Enjoyed this interview in our SAP Startup Spotlight Series? You might also like our piece on Plum, a startup quantifying human potential through the power of industrial/organizational psychology and AI, creating agile enterprises and successful employees by matching people to jobs where they thrive.