Culture Amp was established in 2009 to allow companies to conduct anonymous employee surveys. However, the company's focus has expanded to help employers use the data that they have collected to make decisions. Today, Sequoia Capital India (and TDM Growth Partners) announced that the company has raised $100 million in Series F financing. Culture Amps' valuation has increased to $1.5 billion with this round, which is more than twice what it was following the companys Series D in 2019.Salesforce Ventures was the new investor. Other existing backers Felicis Ventures Blackbird Ventures Index Ventures Sapphire Ventures Skip Capital, Grok Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and Global Founders Capital participated as well.Culture Amp is used by over 4,000 companies with more than 25 million employees. The clients include Salesforce, Unilever and PwC.Culture Amp began as a survey platform. It has since expanded to include analytics for managers such as turnover prediction and goal tracking. The site also offers a large online community that allows users to connect with other members and book workshops. Culture Amp hosted a virtual version last year of Culture First, its annual event. It attracted over 20,000 participants.Didier Elzinga, founder and chief executive officer, told TechCrunch that Culture Amps Series F is a validation of the entire HR space.For a long time, I believe the HR and tech spaces were not considered to be that important or interesting. But, what we now see is that people are the most valuable thing most companies have. So what can we do? It's a great step for the entire space, and Culture Amp is a good example of how to make it this far in terms of fundraising, revenue, and valuation.Elzinga stated that the company still holds most of its Series E funds, but the new round will enable it to work at an entirely different level of scale. Culture Amp was founded in Australia and approximately two-thirds its revenue is from the United States. It is growing in Europe too, so some of the new funding will go to its dual data centers. Elzinga said that Culture Amp will also be able to use the additional funding to purchase acquisitions.Employers have had to deal with two main issues over the past year and half: remote workers coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasing calls for diversity, equity, and inclusion.Culture Amp observed that more employers addressed DEI in surveys. For example, the number companies asking employees questions such as "Do they build diverse teams?" increased by 30% in 2020. Access to surveys designed by behavioral psychologists is available to clients. These surveys can be used to determine if people with disabilities, such as women or people of color, feel disengaged, and if so, how they can help.The platform created well-being templates to help understand the impact of pandemics. It asked employees if they felt overwhelmed and how they felt about company leaders' messages. This also gauged their willingness to return the office.The anonymous survey responses are used to gather data that is protected the privacy of employees. Culture Amp offers what it calls the Inspiration Engine. This is a collection of practices that have proven successful for other companies to help companies take action on the results.Culture Amp works with many employers and can create benchmarks according to industry, size, and region. This allows companies to compare their employee engagement to other businesses in the same area.Skills Coach is another feature that is based in behavioral science research. It helps managers to develop soft skills through interactive two-minute exercises delivered via email or Slack.Elzinga stated that the experience employees have is what we want to improve. However, the way we want it to be done and the focus we had on was to increase managers' ability to deliver that experience to their employees. He said that Skills Coach was created to be used during busy work hours and has seen a triple increase in usage over the past year.He said that despite all the improvements we've made, we are still far from delivering that employee experience. The last two years have taught us how vital mental well-being, diversity, and inclusion are. Leaders must listen to their employees and then act.Glint, Lattice and Qualtrics are other employee feedback platforms. Elzinga stated that Culture Amp's main differentiation is its team made up of People Scientists. These are organizational and behavioral psychologists who create surveys and work as consultants for clients.We are now at the point where we have enough data to be able to start primary research on many of these issues. Elzinga said that they are looking at how the data they are creating can help inform the space in general. Not just heres what customers are doing but research that shows how this correlates with that in a particular situation. We consider the people science component to be very important.TDM Growth Partners cofounder Hamish Corlett stated that organizations are experiencing unprecedented change and that the past 12 months have only made this more apparent. We've seen the impact Culture Amps unparalleled data set and unique insights has on boardrooms around the world, and this will only continue to grow in the future.
