S7 Bonus: The Empathy Bot: Engineering Psychological Safety and Burnout Analytics in Slack with Andrew Zhou, Co-Founder & CTO of Kona

Andrew Zhou grew up in the Bay Area, which he claims was a great place to grow up in. However, he noticed that it was sort of in authentic - as in, no one really did things for themselves. Eventually, he dropped out of college to build something based on authenticity. Outside of tech, he highly values authenticity, has been doing art for more than a decade, and he loves to ski and rock climb as well. In regards to art, he actually finds it challenging to be creative in an artistic way, because his creative brain is mixed with being highly analytical.

Andrew and his co-founders were inspired to build something around workforce management. The knew something needed to change, but wasn't sure where to start. After building solutions and pivoting, they landed on their current venture, around mental health check ins.

This is the creation story of Kona.