Awardco breaks SaaS funding history with $65m Series A round
Awardco’s latest round of funding was led by General Catalyst and Ryan Smith and boosts the company’s valuation to more than $900 million and is the largest amount of funding in a Series A round for a SaaS company.
With a vision to reshape an industry ripe for revolution in rewards and recognition while reflecting the growing trends of workplace disruption, Awardco incentivises behaviour and builds workplace culture through value-driven recognition and rewards.
"Employee recognition hasn't changed in 100 years, and it isn't working. 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," said Steve Sonnenberg, Awardco founder and CEO.
"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," he added.
Awardco’s impressive scale-up
The company operates under a model that emphasizes financial discipline and maximizing value for customers. With this funding, Awardco can advance with its vision about the future of work by becoming the marketplace for the world's loyalty and incentive spend.
This vision was kickstarted with an Amazon Business partnership that allows Awardco to provide dollar-for-dollar value and near-limitless reward choices for customers.
Additionally, this partnership led to the development of a software platform with best-in-class flexibility and all-in-one simplicity to meet all the incentive needs of the modern workplace. This included recognition, milestones, and professional development.
With this software, Awardco has been cash-flow positive while doubling its size and revenue annually.
General Catalyst Managing Director Paul Kwan, who led the company's investment, highlighted this approach, he said: "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."
Now, the company has amassed a client list of over 1,000 companies across 141 countries. Adding to this, over 3 million employees from companies like L3Harris Technologies, Texas Roadhouse, Hertz, and Zillow received over 9 million recognitions using the Awardco platform in the past year.
