OEN Member Spotlight – Jason Johnson of Kudough

Kudough is a SaaS-based, low-cost employee incentive rewards solution for organizations of any size. 

Q: What does your business do?
A: Kudough helps SMB’s retain, engage, recognize and motivate their employees. Kudough’s product is an easy to use, web-based solution that enables organizations to recognize and reward their employees. Our product offers employee redemptions for gift cards or employer-defined redemption options such as additional PTO days or free parking.  Kudough makes it easy for an employer to recognize and motivate their staff with just a few mouse clicks.

Q: What problem does it solve?
A: While most business now realize the morale, productivity, and turnover benefits of employee incentive reward programs, for SMB’s and even some larger businesses, the costs of traditional employee incentive and rewards solutions prove to be a huge barrier. With annual administration costs from traditional providers of $10k - $40k, most business simply don’t have the resources to implement an employee incentive program and are forced to go without or roll their own simple yet time consuming solutions. Kudough does away with these large annual expenses and reward markups and instead offers a solution with very low recurring annual expenses and no reward markups. Traditional incentive and reward providers offer limited, outdated selection of reward items through a catalog. Kudough conversely offers a huge selection of gift cards from well-known national merchants for reward redemptions which give employees nearly limitless choices. Kudough is also a great solution for organizations seeking to reduce their expenses by replacing their current incentive and rewards solution while offering their employees more choice. With Kudough, we bring a low cost employee recognition solution to organizations of any size.

Q: How did you come up with this business idea?
A: Our solution was envisioned when we saw the frustration of small business struggling to motivate and retain their personnel talent but couldn’t afford the cost of traditional recognition providers. And from the employee’s perspective we’ve also personally experienced the disappointing, even counter-productive results of rewards based on limited catalogs of uninspiring and outdated products.

Q: What are your biggest challenges?
A: The biggest challenge that Kudough faces is the lack of funds to hire key personnel now that we are ready to launch our service.

Q: What are your goals for the company?
A: Our number one goal is to assist our customers in achieving their organizational goals by delivering a fantastic product. Kudough will also create great value for its investors and supporters by delivering on its financial projections. Additionally, it’s a very important goal for Kudough to help our local economy by creating an outstanding workplace for our employees.

Q: Are you looking for funding?
A: Yes, we have begun our first funding campaign.

Q: What would funding enable you to do?
A: Funding will enable us to attract and hire key full-time employees required to transition us from development stage to full production and to grow beyond. Specifically our first round of hiring will cover additional web development, QA, sales, customer service, and operations.  We will also use our funding for customer acquisition through targeted marketing.  Up to this point, we have bootstrapped Kudough through self-funding and sweat equity to fully develop our go-to-market product prior to seeking outside funding. As a benefit of this bootstrapping effort, we are well positioned to take the next step towards success with the addition of outside funding. Because we are a technology company we have the added benefit of not needing costly equipment, inventory and facilities.

Q: Have you been an entrepreneur before?
A: Yes, we have created a small IT and software consultancies focused on small businesses and also been members of early-stage startups, including one that had a successful IPO.

Q: What brought you to OEN? What do you hope to gain from membership?
A: With our membership we look forward to forging long lasting relationships with mentors and investors. The classes and seminars that the OEN offers are a great source of learning.

Q: What has been the biggest surprise in your entrepreneurial experience to date?
A: The biggest surprise has been how difficult it really is to be the founder of a startup. There are endless challenges to overcome. But if you are dedicated and passionate about your product, those challenges become manageable.

Q: What has been the best entrepreneurial advice you’ve received?
A: I guess the best piece of advice that I have gotten is to not do it alone. This means a few things. First recognize your own strengths and weaknesses then supplement your weakness with outside help from people with complimentary skill sets to your own. This might mean finding a co-founder to bring knowledge and balance to your venture. Also, there is a huge community of support in Oregon that is willing to assist any entrepreneur that asks for help. Don’t be shy just ask.