员工交流平台Reflektive获得350万美元种子轮投资
该公司成立于2014年,总部位于旧金山。
本轮的投资者为Andreessen Horowitz、Lars Dalgaard、Beresheit General Partner Ltd。
该公司致力于为雇佣者和雇主建立一个及时有效的交流和工作反馈平台,目前包括Pinterest, Glassdoor, Lyft, Optimizely, Instacart 和Thumbtack等公司均在使用Reflektive来管理员工。
Reflektive Raises $3.6 Million From Andreessen Horowitz To Rethink Annual Performance Reviews
Everyone dreads them: The annual performance review. After all, it’s hard for employees to do much with a yearly sit-down where some past accomplishments and failings are outlined, and a vague improvement plan with far-off objectives is set in place.
Numerous companies have emerged in recent year to kill such reviews, including pulse survey startups like Tiny Pulse that produce frequent, anonymous employee polls to help bosses understand in real time who is happy, who isn’t, and what they can do about it.
Reflektive, a year-old, San Francisco-based employee engagement and performance platform, is taking things in a slightly different direction by making it easier for colleagues and managers to deliver real-time feedback via Gmail, Outlook and Slack.
With a pop up tab that appears in the body of an email, a colleague can provide feedback about what someone did particularly well any time they’re moved to do so. Meanwhile, managers can use the field any time they like to deliver constructive feedback.
The idea: by making it easy to garner more frequent feedback and generate more open conversation, employee reviews – whether annual, quarterly, or monthly – can include many more data points, presumably becoming more productive in the process.
Andreessen Horowitz apparently likes the approach. It just gave Reflektive $3.5 million in seed funding in a deal led by general partner Lars Dalgaard, who earlier founded and ran the HR software company Successfactors.
Going forward, says founder and CEO Rajeev Behera, Reflektive’s 13-person team aims to build up more products that are engaging for employees, including profiles where people can update others about what they’re doing, what they’ve accomplished, and what projects on which they’re working.
Reflektive also plans to integrate with many more services, including Salesforce, Github, and Hubspot.
“We want to be where you are,” says Behera, who last worked at Disney Interactive, managing a team of roughly 80 people and observing firsthand lots of “task management” versus employee development.
Behera thinks that by creating a far more open feedback loop, managers will be better equipped to help their employees’ careers to evolve, and employees will be more motivated to spend time with their management.
More than 50 paying clients are giving it a shot. Among Reflektive’s customers is Pinterest, Glassdoor, Lyft, Optimizely, Instacart and Thumbtack.
来源:techcrunch.com
Evernote 全球裁员 13%,关闭 3 个办公室
美国云笔记服务提供商 Evernote 周二宣布在全球裁员 47 人,占到了员工比重的 13%,并且要关闭位于中国台湾、新加坡和莫斯科的 3 个办公室。
Evernote 莫斯科办公室此前的重心是产品开发,中国台湾和新加坡办公室的重心则是销售与营销。调整之后,除中国大陆业务保持不变之外,Evernote 所有的亚洲业务都将被重新整合到韩国首都首尔。
Evernote 首席执行官 Chris O'Neil 在官方博客中表示,此次调整旨在把公司打造成为一个 “规模更小、更专注的团队。” 因为公司的重心已变为成为一个商业工具,而不是消费者工具。他还写到:“在未来的几个月内,我们将会发生两点变化:第一,我们将围绕着用户最关心的核心功能发布重大基础产品改进;第二,我们将撤回那些无法支持我们使命的方案。”
Chris O'Neil 接替 Phil Libin 出任 CEO 的这两个月以来,他一直都在评估现状企图做出改革。未来,他将把 Evernote 的发展重点集中在三大核心优势领域:笔记、同步和搜索。
除此之外,Evernote 正在着手关闭一些表现不佳的项目,如美食跟踪应用 Evernote Food,预计该应用将会在周三正式关闭。
原创文章,作者:徐宁
来源:36氪
硅谷
2015年09月30日
硅谷
背景调查公司Onfido委任前谷歌主管作为其首席商务官,意在促进国际扩张
【HRTechChina编辑部9月28日编译】
背景调查公司Onfido 已委任前谷歌主管爱德华温加尔作为其首席商务官, 意在促进公司的国际扩张。
公司成立于 2012 年,总部位于伦敦。最近公司把业务延伸到美国,而温加尔将引领全球客户关系走出旧金山。
目前已有 Deliveroo、 Handy 和 Onefinestay甚至英国 NHS在使用该平台,这一平台可以帮助使用者成批量的检查用户信息。
温加尔以前是谷歌欧洲,中东和非洲地区的业务渠道合作伙伴主任,并对欧洲互联网巨头广告商负责。
为了实现雄心勃勃的计划,Onfido 2月份进行了 $4.5m A轮融资,投资者包括 CrunchFund 和Wellington Partners, 还把Brent Hoberman算做其明星支持者。
"全球共享经济从根本上改变了世界各国之间提供货物和服务的方式”,Onfido 的联合创始人兼首席执行官侯赛因卡萨伊说道。我们在美国以及其他地区投入的资源很重要,正是这些资源的投入得以满足不断增长的全球市场独特需求。
"成千上万的公司想要通过这一平台对他们的会员和承包商的背景信息和身份进行彻底和有效地检查,让其客户之间产生信任,而艾德作为领导确保我们能正面迎接这一挑战"。
这家公司还任命了牛津大学教授菲利普 · 托到其 Onfido 咨询委员会以帮助发展机器学习能力相应的软件。
Onfido bags ex-Google director as commercial head
Sharing economy background checker Onfido has appointed ex-Google director Edward Ungar as its first ever chief commercial officer focused on driving the company’s international expansion.
London-based startup, founded in 2012, recently opened up in the US and Ungar will lead global client relationships out of San Francisco.
The platform is already used by the likes of Deliveroo, Handy and Onefinestay, and even the UK’s NHS, to check the identities of their users at scale.
Ungar was previously Google’s director of channel partnerships for EMEA, looking after the internet giant’s ad clients in Europe.
To help deliver on its ambitious plans, Onfido raised a $4.5m Series A round back in February, which was joined by CrunchFund and Wellington Partners, and it counts Brent Hoberman among its star backers.
“The global sharing economy is fundamentally changing the way people provide goods and services to one another around the globe,” said Husayn Kassai, Onfido’s cofounder and CEO. “It’s important that we invest resources in the US — along with other regions — to meet the unique and growing global market needs.
“Thousands of companies need to thoroughly and efficiently check the backgrounds and identity of the members and contractors who want to work through their platform so as to engender trust among their customers. Ed’s leadership ensures we meet that challenge head-on.”
The company has also appointed Oxford University Professor Philip Torr to its Onfido’s advisory board in order to help develop the machine learning capabilities of its software.
来源:techcitynews
ZenPayroll改名为Gusto,向福利业务拓展,追Zenefits 的节奏?
(HRTechChina编辑部 9月24日报道)
ZenPayroll正式改名为Gusto。
人工处理工资单很容易犯错,这一直以来都是企业者的心头痛,ZenPayroll这家创业公司要帮业主做好这一业务。然而ZenPayroll突然宣布其将改名,并把其业务向福利方向拓展。
首席执行官乔希 · 里维斯透露到,我们早就意识到会改名,在公司发展到第三个月的时候我们就知道会这么做。
里维斯告诉BI团队选择 ZenPayroll 作为其初始名称的来由:眼看就只有二天我们产品要在 [Y Combinator] 演示了,在这之前我们需要打印t 恤(所以就取了这么个名字并且决定以后要改?!)。
不过新名称, 里维斯说,我们也想了好久,最后受服务对象启发而起了这个名字。
公司总部位于 San Francisco,目前业务包括提供一个基于云计算的系统来自动执行税款计算和支付薪金。其基于 web 的服务已经在超过 20,000 的小型企业得到使用。
当它还没改名(还是叫 ZenPayroll )的时候,公司的目标是帮助 600 万美国的小企业— — 像花店、 教堂和沙龙— — 解决工资条的问题 ,要知道在过去这些机构的工资条通常是由人工完成。
但在上周四公司还宣布,它将推出健康福利和工人赔偿等企业服务,这样雇主和雇员可以使用他们的一站式系统满足他们基于补偿的一切需求。“回看 2012 年我们种子轮融资文件,你会发现我们从一开始就打算这么做,包括福利这一内容,现在我很兴奋把这一计划与公众分享。”
在Gusto的平台上,员工可以访问和管理他们的福利和工资信息。基于已有企业的工资数据里, 夫斯说,它们可以完美实现与福利的无缝对接。
Gusto和 Zenefits在过去曾密切合作过,不过现在这一公告似乎证实了早些时候两家公司成为对手的报告。早在本周前BuzzFeed曾报道Zenefits(一家估值45亿美元的福利管理公司)正开发新系统用于处理工资条,而现在,Gusto打算闯入福利这一领域。
今年早些时候公司宣布了 其6000 万美元 B轮融资(此轮融资由谷歌资本领投),而今估值已达5亿6千万美元。公司每年要处理数十亿美元的工资单,业务遍及美国各大州。公司现有员工约 250 人,和里夫斯说,未来几个月我们还会招募300员工。Gusto除了在 San Francisco 有个办公室外,还在丹佛市另开设了一间办公室。
早期2000 万美元A轮融资的投资方包括支付公司Stripe,Evernote(印象笔记),Eventbrite(在线活动策划服务平台),Instagram (图片社交网络)和 WordPress 的首席执行官,阿什顿 · 库彻、 贾里德 · 莱托以及PayPal, Nest, Mint, Twitter, and Reddit等科技公司创始人均参与此次投资。
(图片来源Inc)
以下为Gusto创始人关于ZenPayroll改名的一封邮件:
Today is a big day for the whole ZenPayroll community.
ZenPayroll is now Gusto.
When we founded the company in 2011, our core belief was that people are the most important part of every business. Four years later, we believe it even more strongly, as we’ve grown to serve tens of thousands of businesses across all 50 states.
We are on a mission to help businesses everywhere put employees first. Today, we’re taking another step towards accomplishing this mission by launching health benefits and workers’ compensation services that make employers’ lives easier, and enable employees to do the best work of their lives.
Our new name Gusto was inspired by our customers and their teams who show courage and passion in the work they do every day. When you work on something you care about, with people you enjoy spending time with, it’s an amazing feeling. That energy. That oomph. That’s Gusto. We believe everyone has the potential to feel this way at work.
HEALTH BENEFITS AND WORKERS’ COMPENSATION
Today, we are also launching two incredible new services: health benefits and workers’ comp. These services are fully integrated with payroll, which removes a tremendous amount of unnecessary manual effort for business owners. Most importantly, both employers and employees can now onboard and manage all forms of compensation in one modern product.
This is just the beginning. We exist to serve our customers. Helping them build great businesses and put their employees first is what motivates us every day. In the coming months and years, we’ll continue to add exciting ways to make employers’ and employees’ lives better. Stay tuned.
Please reach out if you have any questions for us. We’d love to hear from you.
Josh, Tomer and Eddie
Co-founders of Gusto