Knoetic, a startup which has developed a software analytics platform to help chief people officers, was able to emerge from stealth today, with $18 million in Series B funding.
Chief people officers, also known as head of human resources or HR, are sometimes referred to as chief people officers.
Accel was the lead investor. The financing included participation by over 100 angel investors including VCs, executives, and former and current chief personnel officers (CPOs), of companies like Mozilla, Gusto.
Joseph Quan, founder and CEO of Knoetic, was a huge believer that Knoetic is on a right track.
The startup, based in New York City, was founded in March 2020. It offers a platform that combines social networking with a SaaS analytics tool to chief people officers. Human resources professionals found themselves in an unprecedented position last year when they had to hire talent remotely and retain those who came to their offices before.
Quan has held a number of positions in the HR technology industry, including at Twine (the predecessor company to Knoetics), and other companies.
The pandemic was the catalyst for our existence. Quan shared his observations with TechCrunch that we noticed a shift in the roles of our chief people officers. It was difficult for them and also lonely. We realized that this was the right time to create a network that allows people to share their most difficult questions and to then build a larger vision.
Knoetics has integrated Knoetics social network directly into its people analytics software. Knoetics now has over 1,000 members. Quan explained that the Insight Engine is a tool to provide CPOs with both qualitative and quantitative insights. This will help them make better, more holistic decisions about their workforce. Quan explained that the network is a referral-only group that provides HR professionals with a place to share best practices and discuss their most pressing issues, such as how to navigate COVID Delta and transition to remote work.
Knoetic can be used by chief people officers to create board decks or present data to their CEOs. Knoetic claims that the platform will help CPOs increase employee retention, compensation, and hiring.
Knoetic has quickly built a large customer base and community, including Squarespace, Amplitude and Discord.
Vas Natarajan, Accel believes Knoetic is solving a deep-rooted pain point.
He wrote via email that he saw how overwhelmed people teams try to gather information to make organizational decisions. Our best companies have strong people functions that are supported by great data, which helps inform all decisions about compensation, diversity, and inclusion. Knoetic solves this problem for all.
It will use the new capital to build new products and hire. Quan estimates that the startup will have more than 40 employees by the end of this decade.
He stated that we want to create the best network of HR professionals and a dedicated team of community members.
Quan envisions also creating an analytics engine that can be predictive and prescriptive. This could tell HR leaders about the turnover in their company, what they can do to reduce it, and how to improve retention.
He said that it could then be predictive because we collect more big data points with more users of the platform. We could then use this data to predict who will be a rising company or who will go bust in the next 12 month. These models are being built on the backend.
