Staffbase is one of the fastest-growing employee communications cloud companies, equipping many of the world’s leading companies with solutions to inspire every employee with motivating communication. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Staffbase SVP & GM of Americas David Maffei to learn more about the company.
David Maffei’s Background
What is David Maffei’s background? Maffei said:
“I have always been driven by a desire to build success from scratch and help things grow. Before Staffbase, I co-founded Akumina and helped establish it as a leader in the Employee Experience Platform space. I led sales, marketing, strategy, and operations, and secured strategic growth financing with Accenture Ventures. One particular highlight for me from earlier in my career was doubling the B2B SaaS revenue at Carbonite (now OpenText), helping grow total revenue to over $125 million and solidifying the company’s position as a leader in disaster recovery.”
“It has been exciting to transfer these skill sets to a different industry with Staffbase. We continue to see significant growth and I’m extremely proud of this team’s clear passion for not only innovating but also focusing on how that innovation best serves the community that Staffbase has helped foster.”
“On a more personal note, I’m a passionate Boston sports fan and live in the area with my wife and two children. I also lead Crush Athletics, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to youth development and leadership through sports and community service. I was honored to be named to Union Leader’s 40 Under 40 in 2020.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Maffei shared:
“Core to any company’s success is effective and efficient communications. Strong communications can boost retention, workplace satisfaction, team-building and much more. But, today, there are so many channels, tactics and tools needed that successful communication has become increasingly difficult for practitioners. In the U.S., there was no vendor that could offer a single solution for email, intranet, HR apps, SMS, digital signage, security and compliance, privacy and data protection, and customer success all in one. Staffbase does that and we feel our unified platform can help inspire workplace teams to achieve great things together.”
“As SVP and GM of the Americas at Staffbase, my primary responsibilities include leading our go-to-market strategy across North America, with a focus on employee communications solutions. I oversee sales, marketing, operations, and customer success, ensuring we deliver measurable value to enterprise and mid-market clients. As a member of the global executive leadership team, I work cross-functionally to align teams, expand our market presence, and drive sustained revenue growth in a rapidly evolving space.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Maffei reflected:
“The remarkable community building that occurs at Staffbase has led us to offering the largest, fully virtual event for employee communicators and HR professionals in the U.S. Our annual VOICES conference brings together over 3,000 of the brightest minds in the industry to dive into the most pressing issues facing employee comms and people teams today. Creating, maintaining and elevating the conference every year is a significant undertaking that sees our full team come together in impressive ways.”
“The agenda put together shows how well our staff has their finger on the pulse and the credibility of the conference has grown to the point that some of the biggest brands and names, both in and outside of employee comms roles, have been eager to join. This year’s speaker lineup included Malcolm Gladwell, Ariana Huffington, and a wide range of top industry authorities and thought leaders from organizations like United Airlines, General Motors, AllState, Google, and DocuSign.”
“It has been truly remarkable to see this labor of love grow and become so appreciated by the community Staffbase is part of.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Maffei explained:
“Staffbase offers a comprehensive, all-in-one employee communications platform designed to meet the needs of today’s diverse and distributed workforces. Our core products, a branded employee app, modern intranet, and powerful email suite, help eliminate silos and ensure every employee, from frontline to desk-based, stays informed and engaged.”
“The employee app delivers targeted updates, push notifications, and offline access. Our intranet acts as a central hub, integrating seamlessly with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and more. Staffbase Email includes intuitive drag-and-drop editing and robust analytics tailored specifically for employee communicators.”
“Across all channels, Staffbase enables personalized, multichannel publishing and actionable insights, helping organizations inform, align, and inspire their people wherever they are.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Maffei and the team face in building the company? Maffei acknowledged:
“The employee experience category is saturated and often misunderstood, making it a noisy and competitive space. To stand out, we’ve refined our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and clearly differentiated ourselves from legacy intranet tools, email-only platforms, and pseudo-communication solutions. At the same time, the buyer landscape is evolving from communications-only buyers to multi-stakeholder committees that now include HR, IT, and C-suite leaders. In response, we’ve adjusted our sales and marketing efforts with tailored messaging and stronger proof points to better engage these varied stakeholders.”
“Additionally, in the face of economic uncertainty, buyers are becoming increasingly cautious, resulting in longer sales cycles and tighter budgets. We’ve met this challenge by aligning our value proposition with key business outcomes, such as reducing turnover, increasing frontline engagement and improving operational alignment. We have also fully embraced land-and-expand models to drive sustained growth. Although we hold a position of global category leadership, brand recognition in North America has required focused attention. To address this, we’ve prioritized regional storytelling and analyst relations, and launched high-impact campaigns, such as our $1.2M Communicator Giveaway, to boost visibility and fuel growth.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Maffei noted:
“Since we launched Staffbase in 2014, our technology has come a long way. We started with a clear belief: internal communications deserves purpose-built solutions that reach every employee, whether behind a desk or on the front lines. From day one, we focused on mobile-first tools to close that communication gap. Over time, we’ve expanded our platform to support a much broader ecosystem. Today, Staffbase offers a unified communications cloud that brings together branded employee apps, email, intranet, SMS, digital signage, and deep integrations with Microsoft 365, all within a single, easy-to-manage platform.”
“Strategic acquisitions played a key role in helping us evolve faster and meet customers where they are, especially with email communications and Microsoft-based digital workplaces. We’ve also invested heavily in scalability, security, and analytics, because as our customer base has grown to more than 2,000 organizations globally.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Maffei cited:
“Earlier this year, we launched our new Staffbase Email solution, an updated email platform designed to address the evolving needs of employee communications. Staffbase Email offers tools and features like a drag-and-drop email editor, multi-language support, and AI-driven content creation to improve both the employee and administrator experience.”
“We also recently released the 2025 Employee Communications Study, which was conducted in partnership with YouGov and examines the employee perspective on internal corporate communications in relation to change, crisis, and leadership. The report assesses the impact of communication consistency and quality, the growing importance of middle managers, the ongoing impact of workplace loneliness, the increasing influence of HR apps, the widening gap between communication for desk-based and non-desk employees, and more. One particularly striking piece of data we discovered was that only 10% of deskless workers are satisfied with the quality of communications in their workplace.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Maffei about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“One of our standout customer success stories is our collaboration with Alaska Air Group, the parent company of Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air. The organization was facing challenges with an outdated intranet that often crashed during critical events and lacked personalization, leading them to partner with Staffbase.”
“By implementing Staffbase’s modern intranet and the Team AAG mobile app, Alaska Air Group enhanced employee communication across its 30,000+ workforce, including both desk-based and deskless employees like pilots and maintenance staff. More granularly, Alaska Air Group achieved 99.5% employee app adoption, with 96% active users and a 98% positive employee feedback at launch. With an internal goal of 50% adoption within the first year, Alaska Air Group surpassed those numbers, reaching 85% adoption in the first two months.”
Revenue/Funding
When asking Maffei about the company’s revenue and funding details, he revealed:
“Staffbase is a well-capitalized growth company backed by leading global investors, including General Atlantic and Insight Partners. We generate well over $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) globally, with North America emerging as our fastest-growing region, now contributing over $50 million in ARR. Over the past 24 months, our North American business has doubled in size, and we’ve established a strong foundation across all product lines—email, app, and intranet—positioning us for continued expansion. To date, Staffbase has raised $290 million in funding and achieved revenue growth of over 20% in 2024. We are particularly proud of that growth, as the market average in tech is only 13%.“
Discussion About Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Maffei pointed out:
“At Staffbase, we’re not chasing some massive, theoretical TAM just to look good on a slide. We’ve taken a very intentional approach: we define our TAM as the set of companies that match our Ideal Customer Profile. In other words, our ICP is our real TAM.”
“Too many companies make the mistake of going wide, thinking more leads to more. But we’ve found that going narrow and really understanding who we serve best creates far more impact. It forces us to align sales, marketing, and customer success around high-value targets, drive faster deal cycles, and deliver better retention.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Maffei affirmed:
“What truly sets Staffbase apart is our singular focus on employee communications, not as a feature, but as our entire mission. While other companies may offer internal communication tools as part of a broader suite, we’re purpose-built to inspire people through meaningful, consistent, and company-branded communication. That focus has allowed us to develop a unified platform that meets employees where they are, whether through email, intranet, mobile apps, SMS, or even digital signage, all fully integrated and easily managed in one place.”
“Beyond that, we view ourselves as being much more than simply a vendor and as a core partner working to nourish and grow communicators across industries. That starts with our Comm-unity, which is a global Slack connecting communicators from across the world to learn from one another. We’ve already talked about our massive VOICES event in this Q&A, but we are also hosting a Comms Club series of 12 sessions in various states across North America. These are half-day events that feature presentations, workshops, networking and more for employee communicators of all experience levels. As part of the series, Staffbase is also giving away $100K to put towards Staffbase licensing through our Strategic Communicators Grant to one person at each Comms Club date.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Maffei concluded:
“If you couldn’t tell from all of the above, we’re a rather ambitious group. A few goals we’re working toward currently include:
- Deepen category leadership in North America: We are working to expand our footprint among enterprise and upper-midmarket organizations seeking best-in-class employee communication solutions.
- Drive adoption of our new Superapp experience: This initiative reimagines how internal comms, employee services and engagement come together in one seamless platform.
- Lead the market in AI for Comms: Through purpose-built tools like Comms Radar and Guided Communication Intelligence, we design our products to make every communicator more strategic, efficient, and data-driven.
- Refine our vertical GTM strategy: We are focusing on industries like healthcare, manufacturing, logistics and retail where employee communication is mission-critical.
- Accelerate cross-sell motions across our 4 product lines: We are delivering a unified experience and roadmap across are existing base through out wmail, app, intranet and digital signage products.
● Invest in product and design: We strive to ensure that both the front-end employee experience and back-end communicator tools are modern, intuitive, and differentiated from legacy intranet providers.”
