OxIgnite Ep8: Steph Newton, Ambr

Welcome to the OxIgnite Podcast hosted by Yusuf Raza and Michael Hutson - two entrepreneurial MBA students at the University of Oxford. Together, we navigate the dynamic journeys of Oxford-linked founders, venture capitalists, and trailblazing innovators. Our mission? To fuel the fire in Oxford's next generation of boundary-pushing change-makers.

Brace yourselves for a riveting, insightful conversation - get ready, get set, get OxIgnited!

1. Ambr's Role in Managing Workplace Burnout: Ambr's software offers early intervention tools to help managers identify root causes of workplace burnout, addressing it proactively and preventatively rather than reactively.

2. Concerns with Current Burnout Management Approaches: The co-founder of Ambr criticizes existing wellness apps for focusing on managing individual symptoms of burnout after they've manifested, arguing for an approach that tackles the root causes of the issue.

3. Real Causes of Workplace Burnout: Root causes of workplace burnout, according to research, include unmanageable workloads, poor time boundaries, unhealthy relationships, lack of autonomy, and lack of recognition.

4. Ambr's Solution and Data Privacy: Ambr provides a SaaS tool that integrates with other workplace tools, collecting anonymized, aggregated data to protect individual privacy.

5. Creation of Ambr: Inspired by their personal experiences with workplace burnout at Uber, the founders of Ambr developed the software to equip managers with tools to prevent burnout within their teams.

6. Choice of Ambr's Name: The name 'Ambr' signifies the company's mission to identify and address issues before they become critical (akin to an amber traffic light) and reflects the company's goal to revitalize businesses (amber as a precious stone symbolizing energy and rejuvenation).

7. Ambr's Key Stakeholder Groups: Ambr targets four main stakeholder groups: everyday people managers, business leaders or founders, HR leads, and employees, offering different value propositions to each.

8. Steph's Entrepreneurial Journey: Steph discussed her learnings from starting Ambr, stressing the need for rapid testing and iteration, networking, and dealing with various challenges such as funding constraints, brand building, and product development hurdles.

9. Ambr's Future Plans and Challenges: Looking ahead, Ambr plans to bring more organizations onboard, integrate benchmarking into their product, demonstrate their solution's return on investment, and expand the team following a seed funding round. Maintaining a close feedback loop with customers is seen as crucial for product development.

10. Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs and Personal Well-being: Steph advises entrepreneurs to find the right co-founders and build a harmonious working relationship, not fear failure, and ensure personal well-being through regular exercise and time off. She also shared her experiences of using Ambr's own product for managing stress within the team.

The eight episode of OxIgnite features Steph Newton, co-founder of Ambr.

Ambr is early-intervention software that provides managers with a tool to diagnose the organisational root causes of workplace burnout for their teams. By tackling the root causes and preventing burnout before it becomes a problem, organisations can not only improve employee wellbeing - but also reduce associated business costs related to attrition(of which 25% is stress-related), sick days(30% stress-related) and lost productivity.

The costs associated with replacing an employee are estimated to be about 20% of an annual employee's salary.

Steph expressed her concerns with the current approaches to combatting workplace burnout.

She observed that existing wellness apps focus on managing individual symptoms after they have manifested, a reactive rather than proactive approach. This results in a negative impact on both individual wellbeing and business productivity.

However, Ambr aims to be proactive and preventative, providing tools for organizations to identify and address issues before they lead to symptoms of burnout and stress.

Drawing upon research from leading academic institutions, Steph pointed out that the real causes of workplace burnout are deep-rooted issues such as unmanageable workloads, poor time boundaries, unhealthy relationships, lack of autonomy, and lack of recognition.

According to her, the focus should be on addressing these root causes instead of treating symptoms. In contrast to other solutions, Ambr assists managers and leaders in understanding their teams' performance against these root causes, thus offering a more efficient approach to preventing burnout.

Ambr's solution is offered as a SaaS tool, integrated with various workplace tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Calendar, and HRIS systems. This integration enables the collection of objective workplace data alongside self-reported employee input.

To safeguard individual privacy, all data pulled from workplace tools is anonymized and aggregated, ensuring no individual-level data is displayed to managers or organizations.

Steph and her co-founders were driven to create Ambr by their personal experiences with workplace burnout during their time at Uber, especially during the Covid pandemic when the company had to let go of about a third of its workforce.

The ensuing burnout problem was particularly impactful due to the loss of highly productive and knowledgeable employees, who left a significant knowledge gap in their wake. She acknowledged the need for equipping everyday people managers with tools to manage and protect their teams from burnout, which led to the creation of Ambr.

Ambr was officially incorporated in February 2022, with the team transitioning to work on it full time by summer 2022.

Discussing her background, Steph stated that her MBA from INSEAD, although not a necessity for entrepreneurship, proved beneficial in her career shift from financial services to tech. The degree allowed her to start with a clean slate in a new industry, while also connecting her with one of her co-founders.

Her time at Oxford for her undergraduate studies played a role in her initial career at Accenture and, indirectly, in her eventual entrepreneurial journey.

Steph explains that the name Ambr was carefully chosen for its dual symbolism.

Firstly, it represents the amber signal in a traffic light, signifying an intermediate stage between green and red. This is indicative of the company's mission to identify and tackle issues before they escalate to a critical "red" stage.

Secondly, amber is a precious stone, often associated with energy and rejuvenation, reflecting the company's goal to revitalize businesses and their operations.

When discussing Ambr's targeted stakeholders, Steph identifies four key groups: everyday people managers, business leaders or founders, HR leads, and employees.

For the everyday people manager, Ambr intends to provide a tool that is straightforward and easy to use. The goal is to allow managers to monitor their teams' performance on a weekly basis without needing to invest significant time in data analysis.

Business leaders and founders form the second stakeholder group. The company aims to empower these individuals by providing insights into their organization's health and enabling comparisons across departments and teams.

HR leads form the third group, and for them, Ambr aims to alleviate some of the pressures associated with managing employee wellbeing.

Finally, the fourth group is the employees themselves. Ambr is designed to enhance employee wellbeing and facilitate a conducive work environment, allowing employees to maximize their productivity without the risk of burnout.

Steph then shifts to discuss the learnings she has gleaned from her entrepreneurial journey with Ambr.

She emphasizes the need for rapid testing and iteration in a startup setting, highlighting the importance of balancing thoughtfulness with urgency in decision-making and execution.

Steph also discusses the power of networking, stating the importance of leveraging professional connections for assistance and favors. She shares a story about how a simple LinkedIn message to a co-founder of a European tech unicorn led to helpful advice and encouragement.

Steph also shared a few of the major challenges they’ve faced while building Ambr.

The tightened economic environment and the drying up of funding sources present significant hurdles for pre-seed startups like Ambr.

Building a recognizable brand is another substantial challenge, considering the time, effort, and consistency needed to earn credibility and familiarity, especially in the competitive B2B SaaS market.

Lastly, Steph expresses the frustrations associated with the product development process. While they recently launched a new product that they're happy with, getting there required a considerable amount of patience and persistence to reach their quality and functionality goals.

Throughout the conversation, Steph emphasizes the advantages of having a founding team with significant career experience. She explains how this experience aids in setting up effective business structures, managing cash flows, and making data-driven decisions. Despite the challenges and steep learning curve associated with starting a company, she and her team remain committed to their vision and the values Ambr represents.

Steph reveals that Ambr is highly focused on bringing more organizations onboard, with a future emphasis on integrating benchmarking into the product. She envisions a tool that can provide insights for organizations on their performance against similar scale-ups.

Another key goal is demonstrating the return on investment to potential customers. Steph emphasizes that the solution they're offering aims to address root causes of organizational and individual issues, rather than simply masking them, as many wellness apps tend to do.

Ambr successfully raised a pre-seed round at the end of 2022. Looking ahead, they plan to go out for a seed funding round in the coming months.

Regarding potential challenges, Steph highlights the need to expand the team following the seed funding round. Hiring is a critical step for them to unlock future growth.

She also underscores the importance of staying tuned into customer feedback and using it to guide their product development roadmap, maintaining a tight feedback loop between customer and product to ensure that what they're building aligns with customer needs.

Sharing her advice for other entrepreneurs, Steph emphasizes the importance of finding the right co-founders and building a harmonious working relationship. She recounts stories of co-founder relationships that have been a point of failure for startups and stresses the importance of open communication and dealing with issues in a healthy way.

Moreover, Steph encourages entrepreneurs not to fear failure, given the invaluable learning experiences that come with starting a venture.

Finally, when asked about her go-to activities for stress management and maintaining holistic well-being, Steph shares that she and her team use their own product, Ambr, for this purpose. She admits that their small team size doesn't reflect their ideal company size for Ambr but reveals that they have seen tangible benefits from using their own product. The team has managed to identify trends such as falling time boundary scores due to late calls and weekend work and made adjustments accordingly.

As part of their culture, Ambr places great emphasis on respecting each other's vacation time, acknowledging that the pressure of startup life can often discourage founders from taking needed time off. They ensure that team members genuinely disconnect during their vacations to come back rejuvenated and more productive.

On a personal level, Steph stresses the importance of regular exercise as a stress management tool, despite her busy schedule. She also tries to reduce screen time before bed to improve her sleep quality, although she admits to not always being successful at this.

Ambr Official Website: https://ambr.company/

Steph Newton LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-newton-aa905548/

Yusuf Raza LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yusurfaza/

Michael Hutson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hutsonmichael/

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