Money + Investments
Photo by Mathieu Stern
INTERVIEW: Culture Amp CEO Didier Elzinga Discusses Their $100 Million Series F Round and the Impact of a $1.5 Billion Valuation
Culture Amp announced a $100 million Series F round of VC that came with a new $1.5 billion valuation. This brings its total raised to $257 million and launches the company into Unicorn status. CEO and Founder Didier Elzinga met with WorkTech’s George LaRocque and discussed:
- How Culture Amp has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic
- What Didier is seeing for trends in the Culture Amp customer base through the pandemic and pending return to the workplace.
- What this funding means for Culture Amp
- How Didier views the impact of the funding on Culture Amp’s customers
- How this valuation impacts the business
- What’s coming up for Culture Amp
- How this funding impacts Culture Amp employees
Didier is always a pleasure to interview. He brings inherent transparency to every conversation. His insights and perception of the CEO’s current mindset are always thought-provoking.
$7.6 billion was invested globally in work and HR technology during H1 2021, with $4.9 billion in Q2 2021 alone. Get all of the details as a free WorkTech Market Insider in our quarterly report.
Australia-based Culture Amp Raises USD $100M to Help Companies Put Culture First and Becomes Work Tech’s Newest Unicorn
Australia-based Culture Amp announced a $100 million Series F round of venture capital and a new $1.5 billion valuation, becoming the latest newly minted work tech unicorn. The round was led by TDM Growth Partners and Sequoia Capital China, with new investor Salesforce Ventures joining Felicis Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Index Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Skip Capital, Grok Ventures, and Global Founders Capital. This brings its total raised to $257.5 million.
Culture Amp launched in 2011, standing alone as a new breed of employee experience technology, putting the employee’s voice first via behavioral science-backed pulse surveys, aiming to disrupt the long-form annual employee engagement survey, which was the norm at the time. With its focus on building great company culture and teams, Culture Amp saw rapid adoption, now boasting over 4,000 customers and amassed a global community of “People Geeks,” now more than 100,000 members strong.
With this strategic round of funding, we will empower more organizations and people leaders to unlock the power of humanity at work, as the industry’s single most trusted place for all of their employee experience needs Didier Elzinga, CEO and co-founder Culture Amp
Along the way, Culture Amp extended its product from culture and engagement surveys into strong people analytics, employee performance management and feedback, learning, and behavioral economics – nudging managers and employees to take culture-relevant action in the flow of work. Culture Amp was named one of WorkTech’s (formerly HRWins) Companies to Watch in 2017. With this new capital and valuation, we expect the company to eye merger and acquisition strategies, exit paths, or both.
$7.6 billion was invested globally in work and HR technology during H1 2021, with $4.9 billion in Q2 2021 alone. Get all of the details as a free WorkTech Market Insider in our quarterly report.
Source: Culture AmpEmployee engagement platform Culture Amp raises $100M at a $1.5B valuation
Germany-based Remi Raises USD $1.42 Million to Nudge Remote Team into Building Great Cultures
Germany-based Remi announced a USD $1.42 million Seed round of venture capital for its employee engagement app. Applying some nudge theory from behavioral economics to company culture and employee engagement, Remi hopes to nudge remote teams into working more effectively together.
Launched during the pandemic, the app looks to be a direct response to the remote work trend accelerated by COVID-19. COVID didn’t create the distributed or remote work trends – it accelerated them. It also didn’t create the culture and engagement category. There’s always room for a better app, but Remi joins a category that’s been thriving for more than a decade. Led by firms like Culture Amp, Glint, OfficeVibe, and dozens of others, Remi’s biggest challenges will be getting heard above the noise and then differentiating when they get there.
$2.7 billion was invested globally in work tech startups during Q1 2021 alone. Subscribe to WorkTech to get the latest updates on recruiting and HR tech trends and global work tech VC investments.
UK-based onHand Raises USD $1.9 Million for Its Employee Volunteering App
UK-based onHand announced a USD $1.9 million Seed round of venture capital for its employee volunteering app.
onHand hopes to impact employee engagement and wellbeing by helping employees feel good by doing good, connecting them with volunteering opportunities in their area.
$2.7 billion was invested globally in work tech startups during Q1 2021 alone. Subscribe to WorkTech to get the latest updates on recruiting and HR tech trends and global work tech VC investments.
Source: We raised £1,000,000 to make even more employees feel good.
Czech Republic-based Time is Ltd. Raises USD $5.6 Million to Read and Analyze Your Employees Communications and Calendars
Czech Republic-based Time is Ltd. announced a USD $5.6 million Seed round of venture capital for its employee communications analysis tech. This brings its total raised to $9 million.
As distributed and hybrid work become more of the norm, some leaders struggle with team productivity and engagement when the workforce is out of sight. This underscores a problem that existed long before COVID-19 accelerated these trends: most managers aren’t great communicators and don’t pick up on cues in team communications. Cues and sentiment that represent both levels of engagement and productivity as well as opportunities for it. Time is Ltd. hopes to help by analyzing all of your employees communications and calendars then providing insights into productivity optimization. These solutions beg two questions: Do these tools help create better managers? and Just because we can analyze all communications does it mean that we should?
Time is Ltd. integrates seamlessly with the most used communication tools to find communication and meeting trends. All synced data is anonymized and aggregated so your worker’s privacy is protected.From the company’s website
$2.7 billion was invested globally in work tech startups during Q1 2021 alone. Subscribe to WorkTech to get the latest updates on recruiting and HR tech trends and global work tech VC investments.
Sweden-based Teemyco Raises USD $3.1 Million for Its Virtual Office App
Sweden-based Teemyco announced a USD 3.1 million Seed round of venture capital for its virtual office app. This brings its total raised to $4.2 million.
Launched in 2019, Teemyco is one of several work tech startups betting that employees want a portal that has an analog to the physical work environment with floor plans, co-working desks, and virtual chats. Most of these apps are embedding productivity apps and video meeting tech within them. The jury is still out on adoption in the workforce, but we expect to see more of these apps as the market conversation continues to focus on hybrid work models.
$2.7 billion was invested globally in work tech startups during Q1 2021 alone. Subscribe to WorkTech to get the latest updates on recruiting and HR tech trends and global work tech VC investments.
Source: Teemyco creates virtual offices so you can grab a room and talk with colleagues
George LaRocque's updates on who got how much this week
