Organizational Alignment Platform Koan Announces Unrestricted Free Tier, New Funding and Acquisition to Drive Company Growth
New freemium offering expands availability of human-centered alignment tool to help remote teams become more outcome focused and achieve results
Koan, the organizational alignment tool that helps teams manage goals and status collaboratively, announced an innovative, unrestricted free tier offering and $1M in project funding from BMNT Inc. to accelerate their path to Series A in 2021. The investment is well-timed for the rise in demand of collaboration software tools as the future of work is transformed due to the pandemic. Designed as a layer to uplevel and augment a team’s existing task management tool like Asana, Jira, Trello or monday.com, Koan provides one collaborative platform that facilitates transparency, accountability and visibility into an organization’s goals, replacing the pitfalls of manual processes like ad-hoc emails, spreadsheets and unnecessary meetings. In addition to announcing the free tier and funding, the company has also acquired Horrible Design Co to continue work on the product’s UX and create an alignment and goal-management platform that teams actually want to use.
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With the free offering, the company is betting that the intuitive UX and philosophically different approach will hook manager-level employees, and that enterprise-level contracts will follow. Koan helps users manage their goals and visualize how their progress fits into the broader objectives (OKRs) of the organization. Unlike other alignment tools, Koan incorporates a reflective and mindful approach to goal-setting that fosters a more collaborative and invested team culture. Each week, users complete a “reflection,” a status update that includes a confidence score rating and feedback on how a team member feels that the goals will be accomplished by the stated deadline. By clearly connecting each week’s activities to the broader company goals and providing space for improved collaboration across teams through a weekly reflection, Koan helps teams, employees and leaders become more strategic and focus on the activities that matter most.
“After founding two successful companies, I’ve seen how critical small daily habits, team alignment and company culture are in achieving larger strategic initiatives,” said Matt Tucker, founder and CEO of Koan. “Unlike other products on the market, we believe managers and their teams have the power to shape company culture and achieve those goals. That’s why we’ve not only developed bottom-up software that’s loved by everyone, but also made it available to everyone as part of our free tier.”
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