15Five, a pioneer in talent management HR tech, raises $52M to boost its own performance

15Five, an early mover in the world of building technology to help motivate teams, and to improve performance management for executives overseeing those teams, has raised $52 million in a round of growth funding.

The startup will double down on what David Hassell, the CEO and founder of 15Five, describes as not just as providing insights.

He said that they would focus on the things that produced the results.

The round is led by Quad Partners, a specialist investor in education and work force technology. The startup was not revealing its valuation. Prior to this, it had raised $42 million with its last round pre-pandemic, a Series B of $30.7 million.

The intervening years since the last round have given 15Five a boost. Covid-19 and its impact on how people work, and their productivity, under new circumstances such as working remotely, have put a spotlight on how organizations manage those teams. In the absence of being able to see and work with teams in person, those tools suddenly tool on an essential role. In the best-scenarios, where the tools themselves are solid and used well, managers were given important insights into how people were doing; for workers, it helped them identify and give shape to what they were doing and where they were going.

Hassell told me that it has been interesting to see how the world has changed over time. He wanted to solve a problem forCEOs and managers because HR was more administrative at that time.

Nowadays, HR has become more complex and the legacy tools that HR teams have used have begun to get reexamined, opening the door to companies like 15Five.

He said that the only HR tech platform that was built was a powerful manager platform.

There are many enterprise software companies in the market today that are addressing the challenges in HR, enterprise training and education, and performance management, but what makes 15Five unique is how it integrates all of these, and how it is doing it first and foremost from the perspective. The scope is opened into how the tech can evolve.

Quad Partners invests a lot in the education space and businesses that help human beings at every age feel fulfilled. When you get a four-year degree, education and personal growth continues. We can help companies facilitate professional development in other organizations by assessing people, training managers, and being able to make rapid improvements in individual and business performance. We decided to invest in 15Five because of its mission and vision. Everything 15 Five does is related to personal growth.