When was the last time you took a good look at your company’s culture? Do you feel like something is off? Or maybe you want to figure out what you are doing well. CultureIQ has answers for you. The culture management and strategy platform founded in 2014 helps you measure your company’s lifestyle and culture from multiples perspectives so you know where you need some more work and where the company is flourishing. The SaaS platform goes the extra mile and provides specific advice for your business on how to improve your company’s culture. We all like to talk about culture but this company makes it easy to make human-centered decisions with the data to support.
AlleyWatch chatted with Greg Bresner about culture in the workplace, the startup, and its newest round of funding that brings the company’s total funding to $7.5M over three rounds.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We’ve raised $2.25M for this Seed expansion round and our investors include Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Lerer Hippeau, and Founder Collective.
Tell us about your product or service.
CultureIQ is an integrated culture management software and strategy platform that powers organizations through culture. CultureIQ helps leverage employee feedback to measure, understand, and strengthen your culture. Its flexible surveys, intuitive analytics and seasoned strategy team provide unprecedented insight into your organizational culture—plus guidance on where to focus to drive meaningful change. With CultureIQ, you can collect and understand the right data on an ongoing basis, pinpoint opportunities across employee demographic groups, and align your culture with your business strategy.
What inspired you to start the company?
Throughout my career, I’ve experienced, started, and led organizations in a variety of industries. One common theme stood out to me: culture can make or break a company. Specifically, as an early investor at Zappos, I saw the transformative power that culture can have on a business.
Many of my peers felt the same, but it seemed that no one knew what to do when it came to culture. Leaders needed a solution that approached culture strategically as a central business topic, rather than a side project.
So, I left my role as a CFO of a fast growing fintech company to dedicate my career to company culture.
How is it different?
The key difference between CultureIQ and other solutions, is that we recognize that culture must be approached alongside an organization’s business strategy. We do this by providing an integrated software and service partnership model, in which we invest time to understand our client’s goals and their unique business context.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We target primarily organizations with over 500 employees, across all industries.
What’s your business model?
We provide an annual subscription, that includes unlimited employee surveys, access to analytics and reporting software, and tailored guidance and analysis from our culture strategists.
Can the intangibles associated with culture be managed through a data driven process?
One of our core values is “respect data, but make human decisions.” We believe in a dual approach: the data-driven process helps you uncover insights, establish accountability, and align stakeholders, but there is no substitute for leaders connecting and understanding their people.
What was the funding process like?
Our investors are fantastic long-term partners and very collaborative. They recognize the impactful work that we are performing with our customers and they are excited to fund our expansion.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
It’s always challenging to allocate time to the funding process since it takes some time away that I enjoy focusing on customers and employees, but our investors are very important stakeholders in our success.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our investors feel aligned with our mission to help organization make culture a competitive advantage. Our investors also see the value that we are adding with our customers and the strong adoption and expansion metrics.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months
- Continue to advance our product and service offerings to even better support our clients as they act on their culture insights
- Expand our team to deliver the highest value possible for our customers
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
In our experience we have operated extremely cash efficiently to keep our cash burn minimal. We are always focusing on being as resourceful as possible focusing on the opportunities that provide us the most leverage. We also start our fundraising long before we need the funds. Investors appreciate the cash efficiency and reward companies for it.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We are thrilled with the work we do each day. We are excited to continue our expansion of mid-market and enterprise customers in the USA and well as adding to our growing base of international customers. Companies focus on culture in all companies, all industries and all countries. We are excited to continue to celebrate the journey wherever our customers take us.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
Pig Bleecker, yum!