Today Copenhagen-based Platypus, the SaaS startup that improves person-organisation cultural alignment to reduce staff turnover, announces it has raised around €2.3 million from social impact fund Mustard Seed MAZE, the Nordic technology fund Inventure, the Danish state’s investment fund Vaekstfonden and others. The company will use the investment to accelerate its early-stage growth and customer traction.
Platypus was founded in February 2019 by Nico Blier-Silvestri (Revolut’s previous Chief People Officer) and Daniel Bowen (talent and recruitment specialist). Its mission is to help companies discover what their employees value at every stage of the talent lifecycle, from attraction, to management, to retention. Within 10 months of its launch, the company is already working with multiple customers across several markets, including Denmark, Latvia, Singapore, Sweden, the UK and the US, to minimise staff turnover and all the associated costs.
Now more than ever, with many businesses working remotely, teams are challenged to address new needs and expectations from their employees. While most solutions focus on individual performance, Platypus measures, analyses and tracks the alignment of an individual’s values with the culture and values of an organisation. The solution helps transform company culture from a static, top-down mission into a flexible and measurable reflection of what employees actually value in a company. Platypus also assesses culture as it develops over time to identify the areas that need further attention.
“The average cost of staff turnover is $50k per employee, and as high as 200% of the base salary for highly-skilled roles. This presents a major problem for many companies in today’s market, especially as they are transitioning to more flextime and remote work options,” explains Platypus’s CEO Nico Blier-Silvestri, who brings over 15 years of experience managing HR functions in successful companies like Revolut, Unity Technologies, Trustpilot and Peakon. “The future of work, whether remote or not, is all about finding smart ways to cope with retention issues. Close to 90% of the early-leavers—that is, people who leave their employer within the first 18 months on the job—do so because of the cultural misalignment, and we know for a fact that a technology like Platypus can be game-changing for businesses for years to come.”
The startup’s recent funding round was led by social impact fund Mustard Seed MAZE, Inventure and Vaekstfonden, with participation from Preseed Ventures, Speedinvest and The Nordic Web Ventures as well as David Helgason (co-founder of Unity Technologies) and other angel investors.
“Platypus reframes the way businesses measure and leverage organisational alignment to maximise employee satisfaction and retention”, says Orson Stadler, Senior Principal at Mustard Seed MAZE, a Lisbon-based impact fund that invests across Europe. “We spend a significant part of our lives at work, reinforcing the need for a strong sense of engagement, satisfaction and performance within our jobs. Platypus enables teams and individuals to achieve those outcomes, combating symptoms of cultural misalignment such as depression and anxiety. The founding team comes with a solid industry background in HR, giving them a clear advantage and differentiated approach in this vertical.”
via https://www.AiUpNow.com/ by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
