Startr Co. Reviews

4.2

79% would recommend to a friend

(15 total reviews)

79% positive business outlook

Startr Co. has an employee rating of 4.2 out of 5 stars, based on 15 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Startr Co. employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

15 reviews
2.0
25 Oct 2021

Just Don't Do It

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Friendly coworkers - Employee perks such as random days off/extra vacation time - Free products - Decent salary

Cons

- Disorganized Chaos - Lack of PR strategy - believes in a mass pitching style that is hardly effective nor time effective - Spread too thin on accounts - account teams of 1-2 people - Overworked - Roles don't mean anything; everyone does admin/entry level work even at a supervisor level Had high hopes for this company and left a very stable, well known agency to come. To my surprise, my job was very different than the job description. At a supervisor level, I was doing entry level, admin tasks. Every single pitch I wrote or media list I put together had to be reviewed by Sr. management - again, at a supervisor level.... They also believe in a "mass pitching" style where they expect you to find 100 (yes you read that right) contacts per a single pitch and then blast them out. This leaves little time for strategy or personalization and often does not work in your favor. The accounts are staffed with 1-2 people per team with no junior level staff to support. That means the lower person is doing entry level, to client comms to content development to pitching etc. which means burnout happens quick.

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Startr Co. Response
4y
Thank you for your feedback. I am happy to hear that you had a positive experience with the Startr Co. team and felt like you were rightly compensated. We are very intentional about ensuring this as we continue to grow. I am disappointed that you felt surprised by your role once joining our team. When bringing on new team members, we provide detailed and accurate job descriptions and also go over the makeup of account teams to ensure that candidates understand their role within our organization. Each candidate also has the opportunity to speak to multiple Startr Co. team members during the interview process and while onboarding their first week. Nonetheless, your experience remains valid, and we will use your feedback to make our communication around roles and responsibilities even clearer moving forward. It is true that as a new supervisor (or in almost any role), work is initially reviewed by management to ensure that our new team members are supported and get the feedback they need to feel confident in our ways of working. Knowing that every agency is different, we want our team to feel secure in our processes and methods. This kind of oversight usually tapers off within the first 2 weeks – month of work, and we probably could have done a better job communicating our thought process and timeline. Again, this is a learning we will use to be better moving forward. I am a bit confused about the mass pitching comment as this is actually against our beliefs as an agency. We do ask that our teams pitch a wide variety of contacts, but to do so we utilize a variety of pitch angles and insist upon personalization and curation for each. This method has been highly successful for us and is one of the main reasons we produce such high quality earned media coverage for clients. If your experience was anything other than this, I feel we must have done an extremely poor job of communicating expectations. For this I apologize. In regard to staffing, our teams are generally staffed with 3 people per client team. Our teams then collaborate on pitches across clients to work smarter, not harder. Working with startups and emerging brands, we have found that this team size is perfect for the kind/amount of work we are being hired to produce and we set deliverables and KPIs accordingly. We are constantly working to minimize administrative work so that teams can spend time on those areas where we yield the most value. It is an ongoing process and one we can always improve on. I am sorry that your experience with Startr Co. was not what you had hoped for. We are very proud of our small but mighty agency and team, while also respecting that it may not be the place for everyone. Thank you again for providing a thoughtful review that we can use to provide a better employee experience. We wish you the best of luck of your next venture. Monica Guzman Escobar, Startr Co. CEO
1.0
2 Aug 2021

AVOID

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Helps pay phone bill, free therapy (You'll need it), reimburses for gym, good location

Cons

Absolutely overworked, underappreciated, clients kind of suck, high stress environment- avoid this place for your own self care is all I can say..not at all how it appears to be. BEWARE!

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Startr Co. Response
4y
Thank you for your review. Startr Co. is a fast-paced agency but we truly value our team and their health and career growth are extremely important to us. We welcome and encourage team feedback/input on workload and are always willing to make adjustments. To ensure that team members can communicate how they are feeling/doing often, we have a number of checks in place including but not limited to weekly anonymous Officevibe surveys and questionnaires for employees who want to voice their opinions in a more discreet manner, regular account check ins with managers, direct report meetings between team members and an executive or manager to discuss workload and individual career growth, and of course, an always available HR team to field concerns. We also do everything we can to make sure employees feel appreciated for their work by offering public praise often, spotlighting our employee(s) of the month, offering bonuses for successful campaigns in real time, hosting employee events/happy hours/dinners/trips, providing competitive compensation, and offering very generous vacation time. I appreciate all of your insights. While I wish your experience was a more positive one, I thank you for your time and wish you the best of luck with all future endeavors. Monica Guzman Escobar, CEO
5.0
24 May 2024

A gem of an agency

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I have worked at Startr Co for over 2 years and have nothing but wonderful things to say. In my time, my boss has been extremely flexible with me when I hit personal hardships, not to mention generous and understanding of my personal life. We have great work-life balance, a reasonable workload, resilient leadership, and a creative and fun team that works hard. It is clear that Startr Co considers its employees its biggest asset. We also have the best clients in the CPG industry!

Cons

Not much to say in terms of cons. There are some limited benefits due to the small, startup-type of company that we are, which is expected. They do their best to work around this and offer what they can. Yet, I have had a fantastic experience at Startr Co and greatly value my time here.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 15 Reviews

Glassdoor has 15 Startr Co. reviews submitted anonymously by Startr Co. employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Startr Co. is right for you.