- People & Culture Platform company Culture Amp announced it raised $82 million in Series E funding led by new investor Sequoia Capital China
Culture Amp — the People & Culture Platform — announced that it raised $82 million in Series E funding. Founded in 2011, the HR technology company was an early pioneer in generating real-time employee feedback, powered by the insights of behavioral science, and data analytics. And it has since added performance management and predictive capabilities that provide leadership teams with actionable engagement, retention, productivity metrics, and trends.
New investor Sequoia Capital China led the funding round. And existing investors Sapphire Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Hostplus, Skip Capital, and Grok Ventures also joined the round. Plus new investors Global Founders Capital and TDM Growth Partners also joined.
“Sequoia Capital China’s substantial investment in this stage of Culture Amp’s growth underscores our confidence that they have the vision and the leadership team in place to help companies take action on complex workplace issues. Culture Amp has carved out a dominant niche in the global market,” said Sequoia Capital China partner Steven Ji.
This round of funding — which brings the total funds raised by the company to over $158 million — will be used to accelerate Culture Amp’s global expansion and the development of innovative products and offerings that enable companies to build a better world of work. So far, Culture Amp has amassed collective intelligence from more than 3 million employee surveys and built the largest independent dataset in the industry.
“Our goal is to support Culture Amp’s workplace movement in every country around the globe – and collaborate to discover partners who have the same level of focus, empathy and heart. In this day of technological acceleration and employee innovation, Culture Amp is defining a new category that has the trappings of solving for a foundational global need,” explained Global Founders Capital partner Don Stalter.
Culture Amp serves more than 2,500 global customers. And last month, Culture Amp hosted its second annual global conference called Culture First in San Francisco. Culture First had brought 1,200 HR practitioners and culture change leaders together to discuss how to more effectively impact workplace culture. And Culture Amp acquired performance management company Zugata earlier this year. Culture Amp nearly 400 employees and has offices in Melbourne, San Francisco, New York, and London.
“This round of funding will help us to continue to deliver on our mission of building a better world of work by getting the Culture Amp platform into the hands of more people, and more leaders, who believe that culture is the biggest lever that you have to be successful,” added Culture Amp CEO and co-founder Didier Elzinga. “It also underpins the deepening sophistication of one of our core competitive differentiators – our platform’s ability not only to pinpoint what is going on, and what to do about it, but to also drive the change necessary to bridge the knowledge to action gap at all levels of the organization.”
With the new funding round, Culture Amp is planning to expand more deeply within industries and geographic regions that are tackling seismic changes in workplace culture head on including EMEA, Latin America, and Asia. And in addition to regional expansion, Elzinga pointed out that Culture Amp will continue to invest in building diverse and collaborative communities across the world. And the company currently has an active community of nearly 100,000 people representing 147 countries.
“Our core belief is that people and culture are the heartbeat of high performing businesses, and from our experience, culture is one of the most durable long-term competitive advantages any business can have. Culture Amp is at the forefront of helping businesses achieve this. We rarely see a business of this quality, growth trajectory and opportunity ahead of it, and we are very proud to be shareholders,” commented TDM Growth Partners co-founder Hamish Corlett.
Culture Amp’s platform helps improve employee engagement, retention, and performance. And Culture Amp’s customers include Aegon, Airbnb, Go Cardless, KIND Snacks, McDonald’s, Mercy Health, Salesforce, and Slack.
“We’ve been enthusiastic supporters of Culture Amp since we led the Series A four years ago and continue to be astounded by their growth,” commented Felicis Ventures managing director Wesley Chan.
Based in Melbourne with offices in San Francisco, London, and New York, Culture Amp has raised $150 million total since being founded.
“Our mission is to supercharge Australia’s most ambitious founders. With Culture Amp, we’ve found that ambition. We are inspired by the team’s pursuit of building a culture first company at scale and consider it a privilege to work alongside them as they blossom into a company that is having a profound impact on the world of work for millions of people,” noted Blackbird Ventures general partner Nick Crocker.
