Blackbird leads $40m round for Australia's Culture Amp
Blackbird Ventures has led a $40 million Series D round for Culture Amp, an Australia-based company focused on analytics technology that helps enterprise customers manage staff morale and performance.
Additional commitments came from Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and superannuation fund Hostplus. Schott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes, the co-founders of Australian enterprise technology player Atlassian, invested via vehicles known as Skip Capital and Grok Ventures, respectively.
It follows a $20 million Series C last year from Blackbird, Felicis, Index, and Sapphire. The company received a $10 million Series B in 2016 and a $6.3 million Series A the prior year. The latest round will be used to support an expansion of the team globally as well as development of a data management system known as a collective intelligence framework.
Founded in 2010, Culture Amp provides an analytics platform focused on employee feedback. The service brings together experts in technology, data science and organizational psychology to help corporate clients improve engagement with internal personnel. The company, which typically engages high-growth technology companies as clients, claims to work with more than 1,500 enterprise partners.
“Although many of our customers started using Culture Amp primarily to measure and improve employee engagement, we’re now going beyond just an end-to-end employee feedback lifecycle to a fully fledged organizational development platform,” Didier Elzinga, founder and CEO of Culture Amp, said in a statement. “With context from benchmarks, real-world inspirations gathered from our community, and an ongoing action framework companies can make meaningful change to all areas of their culture.”
Blackbird was founded in 2012 by Rick Baker, formerly a portfolio manager at MLC, and Bill Baree, managing director of Southern Cross Venture Partners. The firm initially focused on supporting innovative Australian technology start-ups at the seed and Series A stages but has since expanded its scope to include follow-on rounds in successful portfolio companies. The firm reached a first close of A$225 million ($165 million) on its third fund earlier this year with LP support from Hostplus.
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