We are delighted to announce that we've raised $65 million in Series A funding! This round is led by investor group General Catalyst and Ryan Smith, Qualtrics co-founder and Utah Jazz majority owner. We're pretty excited about this for many reasons. Here's a few: This financing is the largest Series A funding in HR SaaS and the largest Series A funding for a recognition and rewards company. In addition to all that awesomeness, this round of funding boosts Awardco’s valuation to an incredible $900 million.
We've been hard at work building our vision as we reshape an industry ripe for revolution in rewards and recognition, all while reflecting on and leading the charge in the growing trends of workplace disruption. Steve Sonnenberg, our CEO said it best:
“With the Great Resignation impacting all areas of business, efforts to improve retention, engagement, and culture can no longer be a function of just HR. People are catching on to Awardco’s vision: to drive culture and build true employee loyalty by aligning efforts across all areas of business operations — from recognition to compensation. There are no shortcuts; addressing one area of the employee experience alone is not cutting it. Organisations must provide real value to their people. With this support from investors, Awardco is primed to completely change the way organisations reward and recognise their people.”
In addition to General Catalyst, Ryan Smith, co-founder and executive chairman of Qualtrics, also backed Awardco. He had this to say about our vision:
“Everything about the way we work has changed in the last two years — yet the way we recognise, manage, and compensate people has remained unchanged for too many companies. It’s so impressive to see the way Awardco is helping companies adapt to the future of work. It also helps that Awardco is contributing to Utah’s vibrant tech community right here in Silicon Slopes.”
Since our humble beginnings in 2012, Awardco has been cash-flow positive while doubling our size and revenue annually, a feat not often seen even in today's unicorn-rich tech world. General Catalyst Managing Director Paul Kwan, who led the investment, underscored the rarity of this kind of an approach to growth:
"Awardco has scaled an impressive enterprise software business while bootstrapping it from the ground up. This is particularly rare in today’s marketplace where the prevailing mentality is often growth at any cost. Awardco’s DNA is reminiscent of Atlassian and Qualtrics, two other bootstrapped companies that I have had the privilege to work with.”
This round of funding will continue to advance Awardco’s vision of the future of work. We're on our way to becoming the marketplace for the world’s loyalty and incentive spend, and this is just the beginning. This vision was kickstarted with our Amazon Business partnership that allows Awardco to provide dollar-for-dollar value and near-limitless reward choice for customers. Our vision also led to our platform focusing on best-in-class flexibility and all-in-one simplicity to meet all the incentive needs of the modern workplace, including loyalty, recognition, milestones and professional development.
We're pioneering a new future for employee loyalty, recognition, rewards and compensation—all while driving value-based behaviour. Our network and platform have already amassed a client list of over 1,000 companies across 141 countries. Over 3 million employees from companies like Texas Roadhouse, Hertz, Cornell University and Zillow received over 9 million recognitions using the Awardco platform in the past year. In fact, organisations using Awardco to build workplace culture generate positive reinforcement in the form of recognition every 0.8 seconds!
We are so excited for the future—and this is just the beginning!
About Us
Awardco incentivises behaviour, engenders loyalty, and builds workplace culture through value-driven recognition and rewards. We are the only employee recognition and total rewards platform to partner with Amazon Business to offer the power of Amazon for any size organisation's incentive programs. Offering millions of products with zero markups through Amazon, hotels through Priceline, event tickets, gift cards, swag and custom catalogues, Awardco is the largest reward network on the planet. Coupled with the flexibility to build any number of recognition, incentive, milestone or behaviourally driven programs, Awardco’s employee rewards and recognition platform drives employee loyalty better than anyone else in the market.
About General Catalyst
General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures — for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, London and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as: Airbnb, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, HubSpot, Illumio, Lemonade, Livongo, Oscar, Samsara, Snap, Stripe and Warby Parker. For more: generalcatalyst.com
Superhero nerd. Book reader. Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast. Gryffindor. Bronson's background includes degrees in Psychology and Marketing, and he's passionate about the workplace experience of modern times and how to make it better.
