Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re taking a moment to discuss the amount of money going into startups building OKR software. After covering WorkBoard’s recent round, I’ve noticed OKR software and services everywhere, even in Twitter ads that I somehow can’t avoid.
But surely there can’t be too many startups focused on OKR-related software and services? To answer that, let’s take a moment to detail out some of the startups in the space and their venture history. Leaning on my own research and some work by G2, this should be an entertaining way to spend our morning. Doubly so as several startups that we’ll discuss below (WorkBoard and Gtmhub, among others) are growing their ARR by several hundred percent each year, at the moment.
We’ll start with the world’s fastest definition of what OKRs are, and then dive in.
RQ OKR FAQ
OKR is a corporate planning method acronym for “objectives and key results.” There’s a book about the idea; Google famously uses them and there are other in-market equivalents, like this from Salesforce. Companies set objectives based on what they want to become or achieve. Key results are set for each objective on a regular basis, providing the company in question with accomplishable tasks that, if completed, will bring them closer to meeting their objectives.
Got it?
Players
Because lots of folks are running their OKR setup in Airtable, or God forbid, in a spreadsheet, startups are building slick OKR-focused software for companies large and small. This space first burst into my world when I wrote about WorkBoard’s Series B in early 2019. WorkBoard was growing its annual recurring revenue (ARR) at about 350% on a year-over-year basis at the time. It was pretty impressive. Next up was Ally, which raised a $15 million Series B for its OKR service.
Then Gtmhub announced a Series A. The company is also focused on OKR software and grew its ARR 400% in the preceding year. That was also impressive.
Not to be outdone, just weeks after Gtmhub closed its $9 million Series A and less than a year after its own Series B, WorkBoard announced that it had tripled in size again and had put together a new, $30 million Series C. That was when my radar went up and I realized that something was going on. Perhaps you got there sooner than I did.
Adding to my suspicion that something interesting was going on in the OKR space was Lattice constantly advertising about OKR software in my Twitter feed. Lattice does more than OKR work, mind, but it’s also willing to help companies with goal setting and tracking. BetterWorks, GroSum, CultureAmp, 7Geese and Leapsome are similar, offering OKR tools as part of a larger HR suite.
But let’s stick to just startups that are working in the exploding — it seems — OKR software space. Here’s our list:
- WorkBoard: Flush with over $66 million in capital and growing like a weed, WorkBoard is one of the larger, and better-funded, companies in its niche. Based in Redwood City and sporting eight-figure ARR (based on our own calculations), WorkBoard has good scale and rapid growth. How fast it can grow in 2020 will help us set a clock for its IPO if a larger company doesn’t try to snap it up first.
- Gtmhub: Based in San Francisco with a smidge over $10 million in raised capital, Gtmhub is another OKR startup we’ve covered recently. Given that its Series A was minutes ago, we presume that Gtmhub is hiring quickly and trying to scale as fast as is reasonably possible. The company likes to stress how many points of integration its software sports.
- Ally: Based in Bellevue, Ally raised in late 2019, packing $15 million more on to its balance sheet. Its service, the company claims, targets companies of all sizes, including small shops through to the enterprise. Like Gtmhub, it can also link to a number of other software tools. Ally has raised $23 million to date.
- Perdoo: Hailing from Berlin, the bootstrapped Perdoo sells OKR software and, for those who want it, some services as well. Perdoo has put together some pretty decent resources on OKR basics, which we presume act as a sort of funnel for the company.
- Weekdone: A planning tool that hybridizes OKRs and shorter-term planning, this Estonian company has only raised (known) $290,000. That’s very little. That said, its website is easy to use and, like, Perdoo, it gives a good discount for signing up lots of employees.
- Profit.co: Profit is interesting for its enterprise focus. The Fremont, Calif.-based company has no known fundraising — rare for a company that sells to larger customers. It also sports a founder plan and an SMB-focused offering, along with its enterprise fare. It has no known funding.
We would have had another entry to our list, but last October WorkFront bought Atiim, what the larger company called a “pioneer in enterprise goal management software.” Atiim (pronounced “A-Team”) was a Massachusetts-based startup.
Our list is no doubt missing a name or two, but we can easily see $100 million bets across a half-dozen startups focused on the OKR space, up against a number of larger (and very well-funded) players who would also like to win the space. What’s ahead? Probably some consolidation when growth becomes more difficult. But if Gtmhub and WorkBoard’s 2019 results are any indication, it looks like there’s still plenty of market to grow into.
The market will decide if a pure-play OKR offering will rise ascendant, or if an integrated offering is better. What a fun niche to watch! It’s almost as good as Teams v. Slack.
A big “sorry” to everyone whose marketing budgets I fucked up while writing this. I kept accidentally clicking on ads instead of homepages in search results, as Google has made ads harder to spot as it looks to squeeze growth out of its increasingly dated (and worsening search) experience.
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