Making your company’s main mission to satisfy a need that is enjoyed by millions is a great way of ensuring your product goes far. It also makes sure that your brand is accepted by all of those who agree and share in your enthusiasm for the subject matter. This is why applications like Shazam have done so well! We’ve all been there, you’re at a party somewhere and you hear this amazing song but no one knows the name or the artist and then your lack of ability to identify the song and you are forever left empty and sad at the one that got away. Shazam solved that by allowing you to scan the song and provide you with the vital information about it. Now imagine that same exact thing but for wine!
Vivino, a Danish startup, has developed a great application which does exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to scan a wine and find, not only where you can buy it, but also provides you with more wines which you might like, which are similar to the one you scanned.
Finding the best wine, much like finding the best candidate, is all about diversity. If you want to find the most suitable wine, for a specific meal you’re serving you need to broaden your search outside of your comfort zone.
“We have developed an app and e-commerce platform for wines which focuses on educating users about wine and allows them to engage with a larger community of wine enthusiasts” explains Ditte Buch Andersen, HR Manager at Vivino. The “IMDB for Wines”, as Ditte referred to it, is a great tool for anyone who enjoys, and wants to expand their knowledge and experience with different wines.
Finding the best wine, much like finding the best candidate, is all about diversity. If you want to find the most suitable wine, for a specific meal you’re serving you need to broaden your search outside of your comfort zone. “Good things can happen when you start mixing different grapes” states Ditte, to pull the allegory in another direction. Ditte is a firm believer in that “Diversity makes things interesting and it helps solve problems in different ways”. She stated that the best thing you can always do is listen as then they will feel comfortable and happy and will have an easier time proposing ideas.
It is necessary to build a strong culture and nice work environment in order to attract diverse talent.
While discussing the topic of gender diversity Ditte told me about how, when she began working at Vivino, she was the only female member of the team. She did mention that, in the end, one of the toughest parts of gender diversity is the finding of female tech talent. “We are very keen on working with female developers” states however it is always difficult to find and attract candidates.
Ditte informed me that it is necessary to build a strong culture and nice work environment in order to attract diverse talent. She mentioned that they offer a wide arrange of cool benefits which have helped them increase the appeal their company has to all kinds of job seekers. “We went from only having one woman to now counting on 21, out of 81 employees, where only half of our employees are locals”.
Vivino sponsors a wide array of cool social events and interesting benefits for their employees, including; lunch & pension schemes, parental leave and wine tastings and happy hours. They are also based in a nice tech startup village in Denmark which organizes a lot of company mixers. When asked what the single most important thing for a candidate to have, in her opinion, is her answer was simple “The most important thing is a social fit!”.
