What happens when one facet of a Boulder start-up becomes a bigger hit than expected? It expands and grows up into its very own business. That’s how ThrivePass came into existence; born from the Fitness Wishlist package and mentored by Boomtown, ThrivePass is a brand new and totally unique way to do corporate wellness. When Wishlist LLC. launched its Fitness package in October 2013, they found many of the purchasers were businesses buying the Fitness Wishlist for their employees. As time went on large companies like Vail Resorts wanted to use the Fitness Wishlist as a wellness option for their company employees. Seeing this trend, Wishlist founders Wade Rosen (CEO), Andreas Deptolla (CFO) and Charles Shen (CTO) quickly realized the opportunity and niche available for such a program. After being approached by start-up accelerator Boomtown, founders were really able to get the ThrivePass ball rolling. The ThrivePass team spent three months working closely with Boomtown through their accelerator program which provides many of the resources new businesses need in the beginning stages—branding, marketing, design and code feedback just to name a few. After months of hard work and development ThrivePass officially launched in March 2015 with numerous clients already signed on.

Like Wishlist, ThrivePass emphasizes the recipients’ power of choice; once a company has selected a custom wellness stipend of any amount, ThrivePass connects employees to thousands of wellness vendors to choose from. These vendors can be anything: from local gyms and fitness facilities to yoga studios and acupuncturists. Employees then can select which vendor works the best for their needs to apply their stipend to. Employees can decide exactly how they want to use their stipend; perhaps they want to sign up for a monthly gym membership and put the money from their stipend towards that. Or they can use the entirety of their stipend for one major wellness activity, like the Wanderlust festival that celebrates mindful living.

Utilizing the ThrivePass platform offers incredible benefits for the company as a whole. ThrivePass will: lower overall healthcare costs, increase employees attendance, attract and retain more qualified employees with your improved benefit package, increase employee performance and efficacy, ensure you pay only for the funds redeemed because ThrivePass gives back breakage yearly—if a company’s employee fails to use their stipend, that money gets put back into the company.

By custom fitting the wellness program to the culture of the company, the ThrivePass platform can fit your company’s brand and needs exactly. Because employees have the ability to select the vendors and facilities from their program, they are able to receive an individual wellness experience tailored to their needs, offering the most reward and happiness in return. Currently Rezora, Kurtz Fargo LLP and Parkifi are all actively using the ThrivePass platform with more clients scheduled to come on board in April.

Furthermore the ThrivePass platforms tracks and facilitates all purchases between vendor and clients. This makes keeping track of employee’s stipends much easier; companies no longer have to keep track of exactly where each individual employee is using their money and reimburse them based on receipts turned in; the ThrivePass monitoring system takes care of all of that!

As a vendor partnering with ThrivePass, integrating into the wellness program is seamless and is a great way to promote and grow the business.   ThrivePass’ automated monitoring system handles all purchases between customer and vendor and access to useful data recorded by the system is available for vendors as a way to foster business growth. Because ThrivePass provides its own automated purchasing system and facilitates the purchases, vendors are able to increase business and revenue without having to increase the workload. ThrivePass is also a great way to expand vendor’s clientele. A company paid gym or yoga studio membership is a great way to bring new customers to the business that may have been reluctant to do so on their own. Moreover, once a company signs on with ThrivePass, the team then interviews the company’s employees to find out where people would like to use their stipend. This ensures that ThrivePass signs on vendors that people will actually use and that the vendors are sure to receive business as well.

Corporate wellness programs have become an integral part of the business world.  They enhance employee’s lives by granting them access to fun and healthy activities outside the work place that translates into a holistic improvement in life. So why not give them the power to choose their wellness and give them the opportunity to thrive? Give them ThrivePass.

Marika Dasbach