HR startup Culture Amp acquires $82M in Series E funding

Culture Amp, the People & Culture Platform, has recently announced that it has raised $82 million USD in a Series E round of funding. The HR technology company was founded in 2011 as an early pioneer in generating real-time employee feedback, powered by the insights of behavioral science and data analytics. It has since added performance management and predictive capabilities that provide leadership teams with actionable engagement, retention and productivity metrics and trends.

Sequoia Capital China, a new investor in Culture Amp, led the round, with participation from existing investors Sapphire Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, Hostplus, Skip Capital and Grok Ventures. New investors Global Founders Capital and TDM Growth Partners also supported the round.

The financing, which brings the total funds raised by the company to over $158 million USD, 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. To date, Culture Amp has amassed collective intelligence from more than three million employee surveys and has built the largest independent dataset in the industry.

Culture Amp currently serves more than 2,500 global customers. Last month, Culture Amp hosted its second annual global conference, Culture First, in San Francisco. Culture First brought 1,200 HR practitioners and culture change leaders together to discuss how to more effectively impact workplace culture. Earlier this year, Culture Amp acquired award-winning performance management company Zugata Inc. The company has offices in Melbourne, San Francisco, New York and London, and employs nearly 400 people.

Steven Ji, Partner of Sequoia Capital China, added, “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.”

“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,” said Didier Elzinga, CEO and co-founder of Culture Amp. “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 this new raise, Culture Amp plans 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. In addition to regional expansion, Elzinga says Culture Amp will continue to invest in building diverse and collaborative communities across the globe. The company currently has an active community of nearly 100,000 people, representing 147 countries.

Don Stalter, US Partner based in San Francisco, Global Founders Capital, said “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.”

Hamish Corlett, co-founder at TDM Growth Partners (TDM), added, “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.”

Taking a look back at how far the startup company has come in eight years, Wesley Chan, Managing Director of Felicis Ventures, said, “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.”

Series A investor Nick Crocker, General Partner, Blackbird Ventures, added, “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.”

SOURCE Culture Amp

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