Delivering on that value proposition has allowed us to help dozens of incredible customers grow and retain their top managers in the last two quarters alone, including:

Asia’s leading private bank

2nd largest software company in the world

Global investment bank with operations in 40 countries

International early education provider with over 130 schools in Asia

Top-performing alternative investment manager with over $5B in AUM

Southeast Asia fintech unicorn with $400 million in funding

Top-10 insurance manager in Asia by total assets

As varied as these organizations may seem, they share a commitment to retain and develop top talent and build sustainable, high-performance work culture. They are the absolute best at what they do and know that without great leaders and managers, they can’t build a business that thrives for years and decades, not just weeks or months.

How we got here

About a year ago, we raised $4M in seed funding to help people beat the Sunday Scaries and to not just survive but thrive at work through on-demand, app-based counseling. By all accounts, things were going pretty well - we were the first venture investment in the region for a little company named Meta, featured on CNN, the youngest name on the Forbes 100 To Watch list, and most importantly had happy, paying customers. They understood that employees were overworked and in need of support following a tough few years of COVID. But over time our data showed that the number 1 reason users sought out our counseling was due to stress from workplace behaviors and the people with whom they worked - mainly their managers. So we decided to move from addressing the symptoms straight to tackling the root cause.

Our mission and vision

We’ve all heard the saying, “people don’t leave companies, they leave managers”. Managers make or break companies, and yet they are expected to continue to perform like all-stars, remain perpetually motivated, and never complain about overwork with little to no support. This has led to a simple yet incredibly important crossroads: the best companies invest in their best managers and the ones that fail see their best employees leave.

In the age of AI and automation, it’s becoming increasingly tempting to remove human elements from the workplace. Hard decisions seemingly become easier to make when you don’t look at people as people. But we’ve seen over the last few years where short-term business thinking has gotten us: obsessing over quarterly earnings, chasing flawed incentive and bonus structures, and burning money left and right because capital was cheap.

Fortune | Middle managers are so burned out that nearly half want to quit within the next year

Harvard Business Review | To Retain Your Best Employees, Invest in Your Best Managers

Bloomberg | The Middle Managers Are Not Alright

We’re building Hupo with a vision to make being human at work a superpower.

Our mission is to create a new generation of leaders rooted in sustainable high performance. We want our clients to win and we know that the best way to help them to do that over the long haul is to invest in their people.

We’re fortunate that our mission and vision have aligned with our community. Some have had nice things to say about us

"I've seen a ton of coaching providers before but none that truly specialized in APAC and for high potential managers. Hupo impressed me because of its approach: APAC-first, personalized and targeted, scalable across the board."

James Yi

VP, Japan & Asia Pacific Strategy & Sales Transformation

"Hupo has done it in a way which is scalable, very easy to understand. Also allows for us to match coaches to be able to find the best kind of match for our managers and in a very effective manner. So it's efficient, it’s effective, and I would recommend companies and managers to try."

Jean Lua

Chief HR Officer

"Coaching is a simple and powerful tool to continuously invest in training and developing high performers and leaders. Partnering with Hupo was a no brainer as they've made it so accessible for us to adopt, adapt and implement coaching with our people. The journey has been awesome and we can't wait to roll it out more."

Adrian Khoo

Head of Business Development & Strategy

"I am really grateful for Hupo because they provide a whole range of different coaches for all of us who are so different, we all have different preferences, we have different chemistry with different people, for each of us to be able to find a coach that we can personally get along with you absolutely comfortable with."

Rachel Lim

Co-founder

"What I experienced so far is the flexibility to listen to customers and always seek for an improvement versus some more established companies where processes are more rigid. With the dashboard and the tools, I can instantly see how we could move our people's bar from where we are to the next level."

Jacely Voon

HR Director

Here’s how it works

1.
Our software analyzes and helps determine the right leadership competencies, assessment models, and roster of coaches based on a 30-minute conversation we have with clients on requirements.
2.
Once the frameworks are set, users sign up on the app, fill out a comprehensive assessment and get paired with their dream leadership coaches based on a multi-factor model accounting for personality profiles, communication styles, professional backgrounds, areas of specialization, and language.
3.
Users do bi-weekly sessions with their coaches in real-time and additionally communicate with their coaches asynchronously in between. Our software instantly and automatically summarizes key insights and takeaways for reference.
4.
Progress, improvement, and feedback are tracked in real-time and organized into a dashboard for monitoring while protecting user privacy to ensure safety among users and coaches.

Thank you for taking the time to read this

If any of it resonates with or interests you, do reach out for a chat. We look forward to working with more exceptional leaders in APAC.

Team Hupo,
team@hupo.co

Hupo: where humanity fuels performance