How one tech company is experimenting with a unique employee benefit

Usually when you leave your job on good terms, your colleagues might stop working an hour early to celebrate and commemorate your time on the team. There may even be a sheet cake and a hastily-signed card.

But what if your former employer also gave you thousands of dollars to start your own business?

That’s what Nylas, a communications technology company based in San Francisco, is doing. Called the Nylas Alumni Fund, it plans to contribute $20,000 to current or former employees’ seed-stage funding, provided they meet a three-year tenure requirement.

The policy has been in place since April 2022 and no term sheets have been finalized to date, Nylas spokesperson Jason Sophian said in an email. However, Sophian wrote, Nylas has had discussions about potential deals with current and former employees.

“If we believe in you enough to be in the company here, obviously we believe in your potential and success when you go somewhere else,” Gleb Polyakov, co-founder and CEO of Nylas, told HR Brew. In his view, it’s an acknowledgement that the company hires great people, and that those people have potential beyond their contributions in a singular role.

“We’d love to ride your coattails,” Polyakov said.

Recruiting boost. Nylas leaders told HR Brew that the program has led to numerous benefits, in addition to matching up with other elements of the company culture.

“A lot of people want to start their own company someday,” Christine Spang, co-founder and CTO at Nylas, told HR Brew. “As an organization that is recruiting and hiring people, the kind of people that want to start their own company someday are the kind of people that we want on our team today.”

Nylas, which has about 150 employees scattered across the US and other countries, has also seen benefits in recruiting. Peter DeMarzio, VP of operations, said via email that the alumni fund has “been a nice differentiator when speaking with candidates and prospective employees.”

The philosophy. The Alumni Fund is also an attempt to acknowledge some of the realities of today’s working world.

“No one right now signs up for a career out of college and works there for 40 years. That’s not the reality,” Polyakov said.

According to Spang, the fund will give employees the freedom to exchange ideas and discuss career goals and opportunities internally. It can be hard to say you want to develop a certain skill because your dream job or opportunity is elsewhere, but Spang said that’s encouraged at Nylas.

“It’s a lot easier to have conversations with folks about what they want to do in the long-term if you can be really open about not feeling bad about the fact that now it’s maybe a stepping stone for somebody to get somewhere else,” Spang said.

The finance perspective. Of course, $20,000 is not a ton of money in the investment world. But in an annual budget, it can certainly be the difference between a holiday party with an open bar and a holiday party delivered by Uber Eats. If anyone was going to dismiss an idea like this, you might think that company CFO Waifa Chau would be the one to.

However, Chau told HR Brew he sees plenty of return on this investment.

“The ROI there is increased engagement and focus from an employee while they’re here,” Chau said. “And candidly…we don’t have folks just like leaving and starting companies [all the time]. It’s actually a win–win for both,” he said.—AK