Chemnitz, Germany-based employee engagement firm, Staffbase, has raised $145M (approx €122M) in a fresh round of funding led by growth equity firm General Atlantic. Existing investors Insight Partners and e.ventures also participated with KIZOO and Capnamic Ventures remaining invested.
Back in 2019, the company had raised $23M (nearly €20.5M) in its Series C round led by Insight Partners along with participation from existing investors including Kizoo Technology Capital, Capnamic Ventures, and e.ventures.
Use of the funds
The raised capital from this round will enable Staffbase to strengthen its position in the employee engagement space through international growth.
With this investment, Achim Berg, Operating Partner at General Atlantic and President of Bitkom will join the Staffbase advisory board.
Internal communication amid Covid-19
With the sudden spread COVID-19 pandemic, most of the companies are either temporarily shutting down, encouraging a ‘work from home’ culture, or heavily downscaling physical involvement in their business operations. And, at times like this, employees of any organisation need regular communication. They need guidance on effectively working from home and support to protect their health and wellbeing. Leadership communication is critical.
Senior management at major companies are increasingly viewing internal communications as an essential strategic tool for connecting with employees and guiding them through this period of digital transformation.
Dr. Martin Böhringer, Co-Founder and CEO of Staffbase, says “Our vision is to unite all of a company’s employees through strong internal communications and a shared mission. To bring this about, we provide managers and communications specialists at enterprise companies with the leading digital platform for successful employee communications – a platform that we are expanding very rapidly. The partnership with General Atlantic will further help us achieve this and accelerate our growth, especially in North America. The strong local team and the expertise it provides are decisive for us.”
A simple and intuitive internal communications platform
Company communicators want a single place where they can reach and engage all employees across every channel. Employees want a simple and user-friendly way to connect with their company no matter if they are desk, frontline, remote, or distributed workers. Staffbase does exactly that. It connects companies with their employees through a branded app, desktop browser, email, or chat, with the goal of establishing community and shared purpose at work.
Founded in 2014 by Frank Wolf, Lutz Gerlach, and Martin Bohringer, Staffbase solutions give employees access to the corporate information that’s relevant to them and tools for the modern digital workplace, including existing intranets (a computer network for sharing information within an organisation).
Staffbase claims that its products are used by over 8 million people across more than 1,000 organisations. Some of its clients include giants such as Adidas, Audi, Vestas, Spark Power, Paulaner, UC Health, Hitachi, Ikea, and US LBM, among others. The company currently has offices in Amsterdam, Cologne, Dresden, Berlin, London, Munich, and New York City.
Recent growth
In early March, the company merged with Bananatag, a Canada-based provider of internal communications solutions. The combined company provides internal communications software. As a result of the merger, the Staffbase suite with an employee app and intranet was expanded to include a native solution for email communications and closer integration with collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.