TINYpulse Perform ScreenshotTINYpulse already helps more than 1,000 companies improve how they assess employee morale. Now the Seattle startup is rolling out a new product to change how employers conduct performance reviews.

TINYpulse today released TINYpulse Perform, a new mobile-focused application that breaks down the traditional annual performance reviews into weekly check-ins.

TINYpulse Perform mimics the look and feel of consumer apps like Tinder, allowing leaders to “swipe” to rate performance of employees on an ongoing basis. The product, which costs $5 per month per user ($3 for existing TINYpulse customers), can also track emails related to performance and features a real-time dashboard so managers and employees can track progress over time with full transparency.

The new product builds off of TINYpulse’s existing offering, Engage, which lets managers ask their employees one anonymous question a week to find out how happy, burnt out or frustrated they are.

tinypulse7 - goal dashboard

“The number one request from our 1,000-plus customer base has been to re-imagine our pulsing approach to improve the annual performance review process,” explained TINYpulse CEO David Niu. “As we sat down to build our strategy, we knew we had to take a consumer approach, so we looked at popular apps like Tinder, Fitbit, and TripIt and tried to figure out how to incorporate that type of user experience into the experience. As the workplace thinks through the process of consumerizing IT, especially for millennials, it isn’t just about bringing in new technology — it’s about bringing the best of consumer apps from a design perspective into the enterprise, which is exactly what we’ve done with TINYpulse Perform.”

TINYpulse, which now employs over 100, is hoping to build on a recent trend of companies like IBM, General Electric, Microsoft, Accenture, and Adobe that have eliminated annual performance reviews.

“We’re not alone in wanting to kill one of the last sacred cows in business, which is the outdated, expensive, and time-consuming annual reviews,” Niu noted. “But, we are the first and only company offering a mobile-first platform that feels a lot like a health tracking application.”

Matt Hulett.
Matt Hulett.

As it prepared to roll out the new product, TINYpulse also recently hired Matt Hulett as the company’s new chief products officer. Hulett is a Seattle startup veteran and former RealNetworks executive who was most recently CEO of Boise-based ClickBank. He’s also an entrepreneur-in-residence at Voyager Capital.

Hulett told GeekWire that he talked to 60 companies over 45 days when he moved back to Seattle from Boise.

“TINYpulse, in my opinion, was the best company to join because the team was operating at a level where the business was accelerating beyond the local startup cohort, but most importantly had a commitment to being an iconic company,” he explained. “David and I have known each other for over eight years and he’s quietly built a mission-first company that makes a real difference in companies and employees lives.”

Niu said hiring Hulett was a “no-brainer” and noted his “infectious passion and product craftsmanship to leveling-up how we innovate” the company’s software.

Niu, previously co-founder of Seattle-based companies like BuddyTV and Net Conversions, founded TINYpulse in 2012 and raised a $6 million funding round in December to help fuel growth. Total funding to date is $9.5 million.

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