PerkUp

PerkUp is a New York-based employee rewards and recognition platform backed by Y Combinator and designed to help companies celebrate milestones, reward performance, and build culture across distributed teams. The platform combines peer-to-peer recognition, manager-driven spot bonuses, and automated milestone gifting—work anniversaries, birthdays, new hires—into a single employee experience layer. Recipients choose their own rewards from a global catalog of gift cards, physical gifts, charitable donations, or prepaid Visa cards, eliminating the mismatch of generic company swag that goes unused.\n\nPerkUp's catalog spans thousands of options across retail, dining, travel, wellness, and digital subscriptions, and is accessible in over 100 countries, making it a strong fit for remote-first and multinational teams. The admin dashboard gives HR and people ops leaders full visibility into budget consumption, recognition trends, and employee engagement signals. Automations handle recurring events like work anniversaries without requiring manual HR intervention, reducing program maintenance overhead while keeping the experience personal and timely.\n\nAs a YC alumni, PerkUp has grown primarily through product-led and self-serve channels, targeting startups and mid-market technology companies where people operations teams are lean but culture investment is high. The platform integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and major HRIS systems, embedding recognition into the daily workflows where employees already spend their time. PerkUp competes in a crowded recognition market alongside Bonusly, Nectar, and WorkTango, differentiating on catalog breadth, international coverage, and the simplicity of its gifting automation.