Culture Amp raises $82m in global funding to double down on its leadership position in the people and culture space

[September 4, 2019 - Melbourne] Culture Amp, the People & Culture Platform, announced today it has raised USD$82 million 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 USD$158million, 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 organisation.”

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.”

About Culture Amp

Culture Amp is the leading People & Culture Platform helping companies take action to improve employee engagement, retention and performance. Culture Amp is a Culture First certified B Corporation used by 6,500+ customers including Aegon, Airbnb, Go Cardless, KIND Snacks, McDonald’s, Mercy Health, Salesforce and Slack. Started in Melbourne with offices in San Francisco, London, and New York, Culture Amp has raised $150,000,000 USD from leading venture capital funds, including Index Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Blackbird Ventures and Sequoia Capital China. Learn more at cultureamp.com and @CultureAmp.

About Sequoia Capital China

The Sequoia Capital China team helps daring founders build legendary companies. In partnering with Sequoia Capital China, companies benefit from our unmatched community and the lessons we’ve learned over 47 years. As “The Entrepreneurs Behind The Entrepreneurs,” Sequoia Capital China focuses on four sectors: TMT, healthcare, consumer/service, and industrial technology. Over the past 14 years we’ve had the privilege of working with approximately 600 companies in China.

About Global Founders Capital

Founders drive incredible opportunity in the world, and we are their greatest advocates. That’s because our team has built multi-billion dollar technology businesses from scratch and has thrived through all the twists and turns of entrepreneurship along with it. Over the past two decades, we have backed over five hundred entrepreneurs worldwide. Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Eventbrite, Canva, Away Travel, HomeAway, Zalando, Revolut, Funding Circle, Lazada, Traveloka, Trivago, Jumia, HelloFresh, and Delivery Hero represent a few of our global successes. Global Founders Capital invests out of eleven offices worldwide. www.globalfounders.vc

About TDM Growth Partners

TDM Growth Partners is a global investment firm with offices currently in Sydney and New York. TDM invests in fast growing companies run by passionate management teams. Our unique and flexible mandate allows us to invest in public and private companies globally. TDM operates on long-term time horizons, and a commitment to help build businesses we’re proud of. We have a highly focused approach to investing, with a portfolio of no more than 15 investments globally. TDM has the ability to deploy capital up to $125 million per investment. More information at www.tdmgrowthpartners.com.

Felicis Ventures

Founded in 2006, Felicis Ventures is a boutique venture capital firm that has backed 24 companies valued at $1B or more. Felicis invests in iconic companies reinventing core markets (Credit Karma, Flexport), as well as those creating frontier technologies (Vicarious, Recursion Pharmaceuticals). More than 80 Felicis portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public, including Adyen (IPO), Fitbit (IPO), Shopify (IPO), Meraki (acquired by Cisco), Twitch (acquired by Amazon), and Dropcam (acquired by Google). To learn more, please visit www.felicis.com.

Blackbird Ventures

Blackbird is a venture capital firm that exists to supercharge Australia and New Zealand's most ambitious founders. The company partners with founders at the very beginning and surrounds them with a community of other founders who have built successful technology companies before. The firm was founded in 2012 and currently manages half a billion dollars. https://blackbird.vc/

Index Ventures

Index Ventures is a San Francisco and London-based international venture capital firm that helps the most ambitious entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses. Index-backed companies that are reshaping the world around us include Bird, Dropbox, Revolut and Slack. To learn more, visit www.indexventures.com.

Sapphire Ventures

Sapphire Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on helping innovative technology companies become global category leaders. Leveraging nearly two decades of experience and an extensive global enterprise network, Sapphire Ventures invests capital, resources and expertise to enable its portfolio companies to scale rapidly. Whether entrepreneurs sell to businesses, consumers or both, Sapphire Ventures offers a powerful platform for business development and operational excellence to help them accelerate growth. With $2.5 billion under management via direct growth investments and early-stage fund investments, Sapphire Ventures is positioned to elevate companies to the global stage.

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