Hardware and IT company Nimble Storage was the second hottest company on the platform in terms of investor interest, while Good Technology placed in the top five for the second consecutive quarter. Getable and Transcriptic, meanwhile, two companies included in SecondMarket's new partnership with AngelList, were among companies gaining new traction on the platform.

Also in the report: Software and consumer electronics firms accounted for a combined majority of companies the private stock market in 2012, as the platform, which first gained widespread attention as a favorite platform for trading pre-IPO Facebook shares, continued to move beyond its social media roots.

But if software and consumer electronics firms combined for more than 60 percent of companies listed, investors are still prospecting for the next social media goldmine: According to the SecondMarket report, buyside demand for consumer web and social media companies topped $2 billion, outpacing the software and gaming category, which placed second in investor interest at $191 million, and mobile, which ranked third at $100 million.

Meanwhile, SecondMarket reminded startups that there's more than one way to keep their workers happy:

From catered lunches and free massages to in-house yoga and dog-friendly offices, startups showcase their love for their employees in countless ways, all with the ultimate goal of keeping morale and productivity high at the organization.

But if founders really want to keep overworked employees content, there's nothing like a little bit of liquidity.

The Tipping Point Partners office. (Photo: Tipping Point)

Like cushy sign-on bonuses or drool-worthy stock options, perks are a potent recruiting tool for startups, dangled before potential hires like a treat before a ravenous animal. Expensive, Steve Jobs-approved gear and kitchens overflowing with every snack imaginable are treated like they’re the equivalent of platinum health insurance.

We get it--having a thriving, enjoyable work culture is integral to fostering a healthy work/life balance and not becoming consumed with resentment every time your shitty desk chair breaks. But is it possible that some of these perks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be?

Unlimited Vacation Days

One of the most frequently touted startup perks is the unlimited vacation day policy, under which, instead of receiving a finite amount of vacation days, employees are allowed to take however much vacation they want ... as long as they work super hard the rest of the year. It seems too good to be true: having the option to take three weeks off at a time to jet around Europe? Fabulous. And all sizes of company offer this perk: Adobe, Gilt Groupe and Tumblr are just a few that come to mind.

But some reports have shown that when people have unlimited vacation days, they actually end up taking less time off. Without a finite amount of days to use--think "Oh, it's December, better use my extra vacay days!"--employees are often unsure of what's the appropriate amount of time to take off.

As The Wall Street Journal wrote last year:

Some employers promote this as liberating, saying their workplaces are so flexible that old-fashioned constraints such as assigned time off aren't needed. But others say the lack of guidelines fuels a tendency to work all the time ... Americans have trouble taking time off even when they are assigned a specific number of days. Only 38% of U.S. employees use all their allotted vacation time, says a 2010 survey of 9,000 people by travel-booking company Expedia.com; the average worker took only 14 of 18 days permitted.

In 2011, Evernote--a startup based in San Francisco--began literally paying its employees to go on vacation. As soon as the company switched to an unlimited vacation day policy, "The first thing we noticed when we did it was that some people started taking less vacation," chief executive Phil Libin told Businessweek last year. In order to correct this, Evernote began giving employees $1,000 every time they took a weeklong vacation.

For many startups, encouraging employees to take the vacation they deserve often starts at the top. "It's all about creating a culture of flexibility so people feel O.K. taking advantage of it," said Kara Rota, director of editorial and partnerships at Cookstr, which boasts Tipping Point Partners as an institutional cofounder. "I think it’s the responsibility of people in executive and management positions to role model it and be very vocal about the things they have going on outside of work."

Unlimited Snacks

On a recent trip to the Vimeo offices in the soaring IAC building, Betabeat was asked upon arrival whether we'd like to indulge in some delicious snacks. The kitchen, situated right where you get off the elevator, was stocked with every kind of treat you could imagine: candy, cookies and other sweet things were tucked into one side of the island, while chips, crackers and salty items invaded the other side. It was a snacker's delight.

But there are downsides to all this food: for one, it can keep you from ever having to leave your desk for a lunch break. Even big corporations like Bloomberg LLP employ this strategy. As a Vanity Fair profile of Bloomberg pointed out, staffers there were "taken care of," but, as one employee put it, "The free junk food was great but it was there to keep us from going out for coffee."

There's also an important health aspect. Even if your startup stocks healthier snacks like fresh fruit and unsalted nuts, there's a chance that you'll eat more than you want to just because food is around.

"Your proximity to food has a huge impact on whether or not you're thinking about food," said Richard Talens, the cofounder of Fitocracy, a fitness social network. "This in turn impacts your desire to eat. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs have a scarcity mentality when it comes to food, especially free food. If they see that there's free calories lying around, they will likely prefer to go for that rather than paying for a lunch."

Mr. Talens said that in order to eradicate mindless snacking, the Fitocracy office doesn't stock snacks.

"There are no snacks per se at Fitocracy," he told Betabeat by email. "As a company, we're not big snackers, to be honest ... quite the opposite. Most people at Fitocracy try to remain within a caloric range on most days and we have the same philosophy: we'd much rather eat a few larger meals than snack constantly throughout the day."

If you can't convince your company to get rid of the M&Ms, Mr. Talens also advised how to hit the gym on the cheap. "Try to bargain with your local fitness club to see if you can get an employee discount for everyone," he suggested.

Food can be an important way to bring people together, though. "We provide a breakfast spread every Monday," Ms. Rota said. "It’s a good opportunity for people to check in at the beginning of the week and to have a good boost socially. It's important culturally and has an opportunity to let people sort of connect with each other in another way."

Working From Home

Allowing employees to work from home is a common perk, but frequently--if the office culture doesn't encourage it--it's one that can easily fall by the wayside.

"People used to do it, but then at some point it just became standard to work from the office, and now you can't really work from home unless you really need to (cable guy, doctor's appointment, whatever)," said one person employed at a well-known New York startup, who asked not to be named.

Different people work in different ways, whether it be collaborative--through activities like pair programming--or solitary. Different tasks also require various work methods. At the Cookstr offices, Ms. Rota said that there are couches and conference rooms set up for group work, while other employees prefer to work from their own private desks. She also argues that removing the emphasis from hours spent working at your desk can help employees flourish.

"A culture that is focused with how many hours you’re sitting at your desk puts the focus on the wrong place," she added. "It’s an artificial definition of what work looks like."

In the end, fostering a culture where employees feel comfortable to take advantage of the perks so many recruiters promote is key to maintaining a happy and productive office environment.

"It really is about setting a precedent to make people feel comfortable with alternative work styles," she advised. "If you’re an intern, or new, or if you’re not an executive leader, you’re not going to feel comfortable being the one person taking advantage of the work from home policy. But if there’s a real culture of that, and you trust in your coworkers that they're doing the things that they need to be doing, then there's really no concern about it."

Swank. (via Mashable.com)

Hey, have you guys heard about this tech talent crunch? Google has, and Mashable reports that lest they lose access to the cream of the crop, the company is swanking up its New York City outpost.

New amenities include a renovated cafeteria featuring "a lounge area and softer seating for employees to hold meetings and relax during lunch," plus extended hours. Now employees will never, ever need to leave. Ever.

Also, they get visits from celebrity chefs like Mario Batali. Local authors stop by to chat as well, but none were named. Dare we visualize Paul Auster holding forth in that cafeteria?

A company rep said they're just bringing the facilities in line with their West Coast mothership:

“We have been able to grow quickly and continue to do so — we are still hiring and expanding,” Google spokesperson Jordan Newman told Mashable. “As we ramp up, our office in New York is increasingly a microcosm of our headquarters in Mountain View.”

She added that, “There is a lot of New York pride in the office.”

Hey, the GOOG can't have its East Coast employees feeling like they're missing out on those legendary Googleplex perks.

But we’ll get to that.

Much like unicorns or rent-controlled apartments, software engineers are a rare, fascinating breed. Many are sensitive to sunlight, only wear hoodies and boast a blood composition of 90 percent Mountain Dew. Unencumbered by emotional irrationality, they operate primarily on logic, using highly complicated algorithmic equations to make even the simplest of decisions, like which sushi place to order from. They are obsessive, strange and brilliant, and they make some of the most beloved products in our modern world.

But cultivating a happy developer requires special attention and care: you can't just toss them into a new office environment armed with a cheap tote bag and a laptop riser and expect them to come up with the next Facebook. Both early-stage startups and established technology companies have recognized the creature comforts that are key to attracting and retaining talented developers, and they are far from the typical yearly pizza party that most employees are used to.

“Developers, especially the ones I worked with [at Rackspace], tend to really like being able to sit in front of computers and write code all the time,” said Marisa Keegan, a corporate culture consultant who used to work as a “Culture Maven” at Rackspace. “They don't want to be interrupted or be pulled away from that task of writing code, so flexible work hours are necessary.”

Free food is also a major draw for companies hoping to keep devs happy. “Not to stereotype, but they were young single guys who didn't really want to have to cook their own food, so if we had food for them, they loved it,” said Ms. Keegan.

At the startup at which this reporter used to work, the office was decked out with a ping pong table, a fully stocked fridge and top-notch computer accessories. We were also privy to occasional company treats, like an ergonomic advisor, a masseuse and free pizza every Friday.

Forrst founder and CEO Kyle Bragger told Betabeat over email that he had seen the following first hand: “Those keg machines, workout equipment, booze, nap pods, arcade games, motorized standing desks and treadmills you stand on while working.”

At Asana, a collaborative information managing application, each employee gets $10,000 to customize their workspace, which leaves us to wonder: how much does a Sports Illustrated calendar cost these days? Jason Throckmorton, one of Asana's PR folks, clarified over email that the $10k is meant to cover the cost of a workstation, like a laptop, a mouse, etc. And, admittedly, ergonomically-friendly office chairs don’t come cheap. Tal Safran, a freelance developer at Branch, proudly sent us a picture of his swag-looking $500 home office chair.

Referral programs are also a way that companies encourage developers to bring their talented dev friends into the fold. Plus, it’s easier to keep engineers happy when their friends are around.

“We do have the obvious ping-pong table and well-stocked kitchen. We're big on coffee here: Stumptown or Grady's Coldbrew,” said Annie Werner, a community coordinator at Tumblr. “But perhaps one of the coolest perks is our ‘Refer Madness’ program. Basically, if you make a successful referral, then you get to pick a fun/interesting ‘adventure" you’d like to have for a day, and Tumblr will pay for it. It might be just you, or include other members of your team. A few people cashed in on their Refer Madness bonuses together recently so that we could all take a company field trip to Medieval Times.” (Oh, what we’d do to see David Karp jousting with costumed knights in a gold paper crown.)

And let’s not forget the company-labeled swag, of course.

“T-shirts were a really big deal for Rackers,” said Ms. Keegan. “We had t-shirts for every occasion. One of the projects I worked on was a new recruiting campaign. We interviewed employees and asked them what drew them to work for Rackspace, and one of the developers said, ‘If it weren't for all the free shirts, I’d have to come to work naked.’ So that actually became one of our recruiting campaign for software developers.”

Google is famous for its swath of drool-worthy perks offered at the legendary Googleplex, the company's Silicon Valley headquarters. Employees enjoy daily meals prepared by world-class chefs, special rooms designated for taking naps, sporadically-placed massage chairs and even Japanese toilets with seat warmers and built-in bidets. In the summer, you can take a dip in the wave pool that lies smack in the middle of the Googleplex. This reporter has seen these things with her own eyes! And they are magnificent.

“I love Google's perks but I by no means feel I MUST have any of them,” said Mike LeBeau, a senior software engineer at Google, in an email. “I think a lot of the perks are really effective and a very smart way to keep employees happy and productive.”

While the food and games are great, some developers don't require material goods as much as a relaxed company culture to get their coding juices flowing. You know, like a place that's okay with bare feet.

“I take my shoes off,” said Mr. Safran. “It's not necessary, but way more comfy.”

Whatever works.