GoDays — a startup that proactively detects employee burnout in the workplace

Yelnur Kai, 22 years old, Seoul, founder of GoDays, @billionel

How it all began

Burnout is something we encounter every day. Employees, healthcare workers, teachers, and students are constantly experiencing it. But we wanted to create an app for people who could set tasks and issue challenges. This idea turned out to be unnecessary, and we failed. We then started looking for a solution to burnout in another way. On a computer. And what do people use on computers? Right. A monitor, keyboard, and mouse. We realized that the keyboard is the best tool to track behavioral patterns and burnout levels accurately. From there, we focused on improving the learning model.

When we launched, there were five of us. Four of us were in Shymkent, and our CTO and co-founder Dimash Aitkali was in Almaty. We worked, researched markets, and communicated with companies from the summer kitchen of my parents' house in Shymkent. Later, we began bringing in foreign friends with experience in startups and IT companies.

Target audience

We help companies maintain employee effectiveness by preventing burnout and show real-time employee states and capabilities.

We work with IT-companies, financial institutions, e-commerce, and corporations.

Acceleration programs

With our initial idea, we applied to the NURIS incubation program, where we won and received two million tenge. Then we joined the 500 Global accelerator — one of the most prestigious accelerators in the world, where upon entry we were given $100 000 and invested in.

Challenges

We work so hard to be a company that we sometimes forget that we are a startup. We forget that we can be flexible and solve problems in various ways. Previously, our challenge was convincing companies in Central Asia that they had problems and that we could solve them. In the end, we realized that we are more appealing to companies in East Asia.

Achievements

We have raised $565 000 in investments from international funds and angel investors. We have expanded to six countries. We work with national companies and corporations. We have helped over 25 000 employees and are opening an AI lab that will study behavioral patterns and their applications for the benefit of people.

Plans

By the end of the year, we plan to connect with 10 large corporations, expand into East Asian markets, and relocate part of the sales and business team to South Korea and Japan.

We are also preparing several major announcements related to these countries.