Project management tools are supposed to make our professional lives more organized, efficient, and ultimately easier. However, organizations face challenges related to adoption, onboarding, and differing preferences across different teams that often create siloed and disparate systems that are not in the interest of collaboration in an organization. Height is an all-in-one flexible project management tool that’s designed to work for the entire company. The one solution, offers configurable building blocks, allowing teams to implement any type of workflow they prefer, whether it’s tasks for engineers or calendars for sales. The blocks serve as a powerful growth agent providing the organization with the confidence that they will be able to scale without having to worry about introducing a new project management solution down the road. Height is largely based on already familiar tools like spreadsheets and chat, resulting in a quick learning curve for organizations and employees to get set up. Key integrations with commonly-used platforms like GitHub, Figma, and Zendesk ensure that organizations are not adopting another disparate tool that employees need to pay attention to but rather able to leverage Height as a true organizational-wide collaboration tool. AlleyWatch caught up with Height CEO and Founder Michael Villar to learn more about how Height brings a fresh perspective into project management platforms, the company’s strategic plans, and latest round of funding led by Redpoint Ventures.
HR
Benepass Raises $12M for its Employee Benefits Card and Management Platform
Employee benefits or non-wage compensation is growing in importance and the pandemic has further solidified this trend as employees are re-evaluating their relationship with work. For example, there’s been a pronounced increase in interest in financial health, mental wellbeing, caretaking, and wellness options. Technology has enabled benefits selection and redemption to be a family-wide affair where partners can be included in the decision-making process. Benepass is an employee benefits management platform and card that can manage all benefits, meeting the needs of both employers and employees. The platform allows employers to easily integrate all their pre-tax benefits given to employees along with perks into a unified mobile app and card that gives employees the flexibility to easily access and utilize their benefits. Without Benepass, HR teams were forced to provide a disparate experience to employees, encompassing several benefit providers without a unifying resource or any personalization options. The company’s benefit card is usable everywhere VISA is accepted. In an era where the competition for talent has become relentless, Benepass is ensuring that company’s have benefits management solidified for their workforce.
AlleyWatch caught up with Benepass CEO Jaclyn Chen to learn about how she successfully navigated the fundraising process while serving on a grand jury, the company’s strategic plans, and latest round of funding led by Threshold Ventures.
GrowthSpace Raises $15M for its Personalized Employee Development Platform Built to Drive Growth
Building a culture of learning is of critical importance for today’s workforce. Employees must be engaged and given growth opportunities in order for an organization to scale to meet its strategic and operational goals. However, most organizations have focused on providing the requisite talent development programs largely to senior-level personnel or through blanket non-specific offerings. GrowthSpace is a talent development platform that focuses on progress-based training, coaching, and mentoring. The platform is data-focused to ensure that employees are matched with relevant experts and that the custom programs are supporting company objectives while measuring outcomes and progression. Each custom program is designed as Founded in 2019, GrowthSpace is at use at companies like Dynamic Yield (also an investor), Johnson & Johnson, Nespresso, and Siemens, whose workforce are accessing 600+ experts in 300+ subject matters. CEO and Cofounder Omer Glass to learn more about the future of leadership development, the company’s strategic plans, and latest round of funding led by M12 Ventures and Vertex Ventures.
Bravely Raises $15M for its On-Demand Workplace Coaching Platform
Despite an increasing reliance on technology, the workforce has never been more human-centric than ever before. Organizations must nurture and maximize employee potential to put teams in a position to grow and for companies to succeed. Employee coaching has become a modern centerpiece of continuous performance management. But for far too long, coaching has been […]
Knoetic Raises $18M Series A for its Workforce Analytics Platform and Social Network for Chief People Officers
The evolution of a successful company involves a typical storyline that goes from the founding team focusing on product and growth at the earliest stages to the founders’ roles transitioning to storytelling and finding, engaging, and retaining the right talent after product-market-fit is established. Eventually, as company roles become more specialized, many companies are hiring Chief People Officers (CPOs) to manage the strategy of building and retaining exceptional talent with a focus on hiring, training, professional development, and performance management. Knoetic is a platform built for Chief People Officers by Chief People Officers. The platform is a workforce analytics platform that also has its own professional social network of 1000+ Chief People Officers that are able to support one another and provide best practices. The analytics side allows CPOs to take an unprecedented data-driven approach to their roles. The company is emerging from stealth but has its roots in another startup that combined analytics and community founded by the same team – Twine. AlleyWatch caught up with Founder and CEO Joseph Quan to learn more about the business, strategic plans, and recent round of funding led by Accel.
Moth+Flame Raises $2.5M for its Immersive VR-Powered Training Technology Platform
The market for VR training is expected to surpass $294B globally by 2030. VR learning to train people is more cost-efficient and effective than training in classrooms and online learning. In a recent PWC study, VR learners completed training 4x faster than classroom learners; VR learners were 4x times more focused than online learners and 1.5x more than classroom learners. Moth+Flame is a specialist in providing immersive VR training for the public and private sectors. The company focuses both on soft and hard skills focusing on things like workforce programs for diversity and inclusion and suicide prevention through conversational and role-play simulations; physical training simulations include pilot training and aircraft maintenance training for military applications. AlleyWatch caught up with Founder and CEO Kevin Cornish to learn more about how is time working with Taylor Swift inspired the business, the company’s strategic plans, and recent round of funding from investors that include Bee Partners, First In, Meeting Street Capital, Service Provider Capital, and Spacecadet.
Gloat Raises $57M for its Talent Marketplace Platform That Allows Companies to Tap into Their Talent Pools More Effectively
The pandemic has tested the workforce resilience, agility, and capabilities to reshape our approach to the future of work. Organizations, now split across remote locations, need to understand the composition of their workforce, their skillset, and availability more so than ever before. Gloat is a talent marketplace platform for companies to manage, deploy, and grow their internal talent pools. By mapping a workforce’s talents, skills, and availability, managers now have access to a broader talent pool, diversifying teams, and allowing projects, initiatives, launches, open roles, mentorship programs, etc. to get staffed faster while keeping employees engaged. As the pandemic led to an acceleration in workforce management, Gloat was able to 5x its ARR and triple its headcount. Companies like Unilever, Schneider Electric, Novartis, and HDBC are users of the platform. AlleyWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Ben Reuveni to learn more about the need for talent marketplaces, the company’s strategic plans, the latest round of funding from investors that include Accel, Eight Roads Ventures, Intel Capital, Magma Venture Partners, and PICO Partners.
ChartHop Raises $35M to Help a Company Better Understand Its Most Important Resource: Its People
The evolution of a successful company involves a typical storyline that goes from the founding team focusing on product and growth at the earliest stages to the founders’ roles transitioning to storytelling and finding, engaging, and retaining the right talent after product-market-fit is established. Initially, with a small team, it’s more manageable for management to understand employee capabilities, motivation, and how these align with the company’s goals long-term and short. ChartHop is an organizational management platform that provides unprecedented and automated insight into a company’s talent pool at a holistic level, enabling companies to effectively manage, understand, and visualize the organizational structure as they scale. The platform integrates with a growing number of HR data providers to seamlessly enable organizational decision-making for things like tying compensation directly to performance data or tracking the effectiveness of DE&I (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts. The company now has 130+ corporate customers and has grown revenue 500% over the last year, attracting its third round of funding in the last 18 months.AlleyWatch caught up with CEO, Founder, and serial entrepreneur Ian White to learn more about how ChartHop has built the ultimate people analytics platform, the company’s strategic plans, and latest round of funding from investors that include ChartHop raised a $35M Series B round. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by Elad Gil, and previous investors Cowboy Ventures and SemperVirens.
Nayya Raises $37M For its Healthcare Benefits Management Platform that Helps Employees Choose the Right Insurance and Manage Claims
85% of employees indicated that they would welcome assistance when it comes to navigating their benefits in order to make educated choices. However, most HR and benefits teams don’t have the capacity to be a full-time resource in this regard, creating a significant pain point. Nayya is a software and data infrastructure startup that uses data science and AI to empower employees to make the right decisions, based on their individual circumstances, when it comes to choosing and managing their benefits. Sitting at the intersection of HR, insurtech, and big data, the company takes billion of data points, claims data, and combines them with other data integrations to present a data-driven engine that can be used for decisioning for enrollment, new employee onboarding, and ongoing claims management. Leveraging Nayya’s platform yields a better experience for employees and employers, while driving better financial outcomes for both. AlleyWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Sina Chehrazi to learn more about how Nayya is transforming the experience of selecting and managing benefits with AI, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding from investors that include SVB Capital, ICONIQ Growth, Felicis Ventures, Bow Capital, Social Leverage, SemperVirens, Guardian Strategic Ventures, Unum Business Ventures, and CNO Financial Group.
Bonsai Raises $3M for its Video Chat Platform for Business and Career Advice
Bonsai, cofounded by Jake Rosenfeld and Patrick Sullivan, is a 1:1 video chat platform for business and career advice.
Creatively Raises $5M for its Job Platform and Professional Network for Creatives
The creative industry is ever-evolving and talented creatives are looking for new roles to showcase their skills. Brands are constantly looking for talent that can keep their looks current. Creatively, an online professional network and recruitment platform for creatives, connects the two. The platform allows job seekers to showcase their portfolios in an elegant interface that allows brands to walk through a portfolio seamlessly, connect, and hire for full-time roles, internships, and freelance work. Creatively is free for creatives with employers paying a fee to access to post jobs and have access to a suite of recruitment tools. Since launching last year during the pandemic, the company already had 125,000+ creatives on the platform and 650+ employers. AlleyWatch caught up with CEO Gregory Gittrich to learn more about the experience of launching in the middle of the pandemic, the company’s strategic plans, and recent round of funding from investors that include Link Ventures, Tornante Company, Advancit Capital, and Amplifyher Ventures.