Happeo lands $26M to provide a central intranet portal for employees – Nob6

As corporations undertake new instruments to accommodate distant methods of labor, it’s changing into harder for his or her workforces to maintain observe of and handle data throughout inside providers. It’s not simply the C-suite that’s being challenged — lower-level workers, too, are having to wrestle with employers’ now-sprawling catalogs of apps. In accordance with Statista, the common enterprise makes use of 110 software-as-a-service apps in the present day, up from eight in 2015. Coveo found that, because of this, staff spend simply over 3 hours a day looking for data in 2022, an hour extra in comparison with a yr in the past.

Should you ask Perttu Ojansuu, the reply is an intranet, or a company-specific, digital portal that centralizes a lot of a companies’ software program and documentation in a single place. Ojansuu acknowledges his bias — he co-founded Happeo, a startup creating intranet software program to attach workers with firm instruments. However Ojansuu says that his view was formed by his experiences working with prospects at Gapps, a Finland-based Google Workspace reseller he helped to co-found in 2010. 

“[With Gapps,] co-founder Antero Hanhirova and I noticed a giant alternative to assist enterprise corporations within the Nordics with their cloud transformation,” Ojansuu advised Nob6 in a current interview. “Throughout our Gapps time, we recognized a major and constant problem that our prospects have been going through: there wasn’t any central supply of reality for data that might be readily built-in with different software-as-a-service instruments … In 2016, born from that buyer problem, we determined to create a complete answer for our prospects.”

Ojansuu and Hanhirova launched Happeo’s first incarnation, “Universe,” in early 2016. In 2017, the 2 formally integrated the corporate. Thus far, Happeo has raised $47 million in enterprise capital, together with a $26 million Sequence B spherical co-led by Endeit Capital, Smartfin and Evli Progress Companions that closed in the present day. (Inkef Capital, Maki.vc, and Vendep Capital additionally participated within the Sequence B.)

Happeo goals to attach groups and folks in an “natural approach,” Ojansuu says, letting them create channels and pages round initiatives and mutual pursuits. The platform brings sources and apps collectively in a searchable dwelling portal, with a launcher that permits workers to leap into completely different software program. 

Happeo’s “federated search” functionality can search throughout an organization’s numerous inside instruments. Past this, the service — which integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace — affords a spot to host shared recordsdata and paperwork. On the again finish, an analytics dashboard exhibits metrics like channel, web page and submit engagement, in addition to search exercise (e.g., probably the most searched key phrases).

“As tech corporations develop quick, they don’t have time to construct processes — the result’s data chaos, resulting in slowed-down productiveness and low worker expertise,” Ojansuu defined by way of an e-mail Q&A. “That’s the place Happeo is available in … [It] removes the burden of sharing vital updates from instantaneous messaging instruments, so groups can return to utilizing these to collaborate as an alternative of being overwhelmed by data.”

Intranet platforms are hardly new — they’ve been round in some kind for many years. And there’s loads of rivals within the house, together with Google and Microsoft. Final July, Simpplr raised $32 million for its instruments to construct intranet websites. Extra lately (in March), Staffbase landed $115 million at a $1.1 billion valuation to develop its intranet-style comms platform.

It’s value noting that the massive financing rounds are partly a mirrored image of the passion amongst VCs for HR tech, broadly talking. The yr 2021 proved to be a record year for HR tech distributors, with round $14 billion invested throughout over 300 offers.

One hurdle for Happeo to beat is the notion that intranet providers aren’t significantly helpful — or nice — from a consumer perspective. One survey discovered that solely 13% of workers use their intranets each day, whereas 31% admit to having by no means used them. Research pegs outdated or irrelevant content material and a scarcity of government engagement as the most important culprits, together with a scarcity of clear objective.

However Ojansuu claims that Happeo’s is extra holistic than most. 

“Work is not a spot the place workers come collectively, share data, bounce concepts off one another, talk, and construct belief and connection. Brick-and-mortar places of work and water cooler conversations have disappeared. Staff took all this shared data with us into the house workplace,” Ojansuu advised Nob6. “Worker expertise is now on the heart of the HR tech market … [E]veryone needs to construct an ‘expertise layer’ that sits in entrance of workers. Happeo is addressing this actively by changing into the central supply of reality for corporations to entry all their data.”

Ojansuu says — for what it’s value — that the gross sales pitch satisfied Rajeev Suri, the previous CEO of Nokia, to make his first-ever angel funding in a Finnish firm. It seemingly helped that Happeo had over 366 prospects previous to the closing of the Sequence B, together with Pinterest, Decathlon and Marqeta. 

“The issues Happeo solves are business-critical to success and its urgency for corporations is excessive each in instances of financial downturn and development. Due to this, Happeo doesn’t anticipate any impact on its anticipated development. Q2 2022 has been a record-setting quarter [for the company],” Ojansuu stated. “Having simply closed our Sequence B spherical we’re in an amazing place, and we’ve quite a lot of job openings, particularly in tech and gross sales.”

Within the close to time period, Ojansuu says that the plan is to spend money on Happeo’s product improvement with a deal with including new app and repair integrations. Additional growth in North America is within the works, which is able to contact on Happeo’s gross sales and buyer success groups in New York.

Happeo presently has 124 workers and expects to have 160 by the tip of the yr.