Mystery Raises $18.5 Million to Build a One-Stop-Shop to Proactively Engage Employees

• Used by thousands of teams, Mystery is the first platform that connects morale to a company’s bottom line

Mystery, the one-stop-shop to proactively engage employees, announced $18.5M in new funding from Greylock with participation from Moving Capital, Endeavor, Gaingels, and others. The funding will allow Mystery to continue servicing the unprecedented demand from companies for proactive employee engagement, grow the team, and expand their offering.

“It’s incredibly challenging to build connections with our coworkers in a distributed work environment, resulting in employees feeling unmotivated and disconnected. Leaders are scrambling to solve engagement problems with team events that fall flat, swag that sits in the back of the closet, and worst of all—gift cards”

In today’s age of remote and distributed work, hiring and retaining talent is more challenging than ever. Over 19 million U.S. workers have quit their jobs since April 2021, and the “Great Resignation” is far from over: a December CareerArc/Harris Poll reveals that 23% of employed Americans plan to quit their jobs in the next 12 months. Leaders are pouring money into resources to engage their employees, spending billions of dollars in the last year, yet the majority of the money spent was completely wasted.

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“It’s incredibly challenging to build connections with our coworkers in a distributed work environment, resulting in employees feeling unmotivated and disconnected. Leaders are scrambling to solve engagement problems with team events that fall flat, swag that sits in the back of the closet, and worst of all—gift cards,” said Shane Kovalsky, CEO of Mystery. “Employers need more than pulses and surveys to understand what works for their teams. We started Mystery to take the guesswork out of employee engagement, and connect morale to a company’s bottom line.”

Mystery is building the first end-to-end employee morale platform. To start, it has a managed marketplace of virtual social events including freestyle rapping, caricature classes, comedy, and many more. The planning, booking, and event execution is all handled by Mystery. By collecting employee preferences, connecting employee calendars, and integrating hospitality data throughout the event experience, the platform automatically matches teams to the right events at the right time.

Because Mystery matches teams with events, it is able to optimize every event against key engagement outcomes. This gives business leaders, people teams, and HR leaders a real lever to move important metrics like sense of belonging, intra-team cohesion, and ultimately—retention.

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“In the new virtual environment, it can be difficult to create engaging events that employees want to participate in,” said Aleena Sarwana, Talent at Twilio. “By using Mystery’s platform, I was able to improve our average attendance rate from 35% to 75% even with a multi-regional, global team.”

Mystery has seen incredible demand for its offering, with thousands of teams across hundreds of companies like Amazon, Microsoft, KPMG, Ford, Uber, and Stripe using Mystery. The number of teams using Mystery grew 10X during the last year. In 2022, over one million employees are expected to participate in events booked through Mystery’s platform.

“Mystery has developed a unique solution to one of most critical problems facing leaders today: employee engagement. They’re one part technology company, and one part experience design and organization science company. Employees love their events, and companies love their seamless execution platform, outcomes and insights,” said Sarah Guo, Partner at Greylock. “Shane Kovalsky and Brennan Keough have a passion for understanding what makes people connected, and I’m thrilled to partner with them in their next phase of explosive growth.”