Knoetic, the #1 Chief People Officer (CPO) platform and “single source of truth” for people analytics, announced its $36M Series B. also marks another milestone in Knoetic’s journey to build the most beloved CPO community and to help CPOs, CEOs, and managers make better data-driven decisions with people analytics. The round is led by EQT Ventures with participation from new investor Menlo Ventures, and long-time partner Accel (which led the Series A).
This round closely follows their $18M Series A raised in Aug 2021. The company continues to hire aggressively for its product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.
As employers continue to navigate the “new normal” and adapt to meet employees’ evolving needs, 1000s of CPOs and their teammates have flocked to Knoetic for answers. They include executives from Lyft, Credit Karma, Box, NerdWallet, and OpenAI.
For example, a Q2 2022 event for 100s of CPOs in Knoetic’s community (named CPOHQ) asked how members were preparing for the looming macroeconomic downturn. In response, 72% of CPOs shared that they were revisiting hiring plans with their CEOs, and 48% were evaluating revised targets for their board, with dozens also posting their playbooks on navigating the related challenges.
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Other discussions inside Knoetic/CPOHQ have touched on “quiet quitting,” the Great Resignation, downturn navigation, Roe v. Wade, hiring freezes, COVID protocols, and DEI metrics.
Since its founding in 2020, the New York-based company has experienced rapid expansion, including 5X YoY ARR growth, 20X community growth, and 3X YoY headcount growth. Building on this momentum, Knoetic will use its new funds to invest in its two main product lines:
- People Analytics: The Knoetic People Analytics platform empowers teams to uncover comprehensive workforce insights on their attrition, DEI, performance, compensation, and more. By integrating with 60+ HR systems to give leaders a single source of truth, Knoetic saves People teams 100s of hours typically spent on wrangling HR data, allowing them to focus their time on more strategic, high-impact work.
- Community (CPOHQ): Knoetic will also further expand its global network of people leaders and CPOs, making it easier for members to find peers to confide in, learn from, and grow with. With exclusive access to playbooks, strategic discussions, benchmarking, and more, CPOHQ members gain powerful toolkits to make better workforce decisions in their leadership roles.
Joseph Quan, Knoetic’s Founder and CEO, explains:
“Every day, challenges emerge in this new world of work. Chief People Officers, HR leaders, and modern managers are making incredibly tough decisions daily. A lot more has been expected of them ever since 2020 rolled around.
To rise to the challenge, this generation of People leaders needs to have a strategic pulse on what’s happening both inside AND outside their companies. That’s where Knoetic comes in.
Our People Analytics solution gives you 100s of insights about what’s happening within your organization. And our community gives you an alliance of C-level peers to collaborate with. Knoetic helps you make better decisions about your people, and we’ll soon be in the hands of every Chief People Officer in the world.
I couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with EQT Ventures and Ali, in particular, as we execute this next chapter of Knoetic’s story. I have a true thought partner in Ali, who understands the vision. We’re excited to play big and win big with his team.”
Alastair (“Ali”) Mitchell, Partner and Co-Head of EQT Ventures, says:
“Knoetic is leading the strategic digitization of the HR function for some of today’s fastest-growing companies, and we are excited to support the team’s global expansion to create and lead in this category. Companies today are crushed under a sea of HR data buried in siloed systems. Knoetic is offering the data infrastructure layer to not only surface today’s workforce insights, but also to predict future ones.
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We’re excited to partner with the Knoetic team and Joseph, the founder and CEO, in whom we saw some of the traits of world-class B2B founders. I am honored to partner with him and his team to help Knoetic build a category-defining global success story.”
Ali Mitchell, who currently serves on the Board of Directors for Handshake and Beamery, will also join Knoetic’s Board of Directors.
JP Sanday, Partner at Menlo Ventures, says:
“In the competitive world of business, People teams play an increasingly important role. Knoetic unlocks their full potential with a purpose-built system that unifies HR point solutions and enables data-driven decisions across the entire org. It’s a powerful solution that Joseph and the team are building alongside a powerful community of Chief People Officers, and we’re thrilled to be supporting them on this journey.”
Knoetic empowers the evolving human resources role and rise of the strategic Chief People Officer, which is the third fastest growing C-suite role (according to LinkedIn data). The HR and People software sector is currently a market worth north of $20B.
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