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News calendar    Oct 10, 2019

Edison Partners Leads $15 Million Follow-On Growth Investment in Emplify

Edison Partners today announced leading a $15 million follow-on growth investment in Emplify, an employee engagement measurement and improvement company.

Marks firm’s fifth investment in the Midwest over the last 16 months

 

PRINCETON, NJ. (Oct. 10, 2019)—Edison Partners today announced leading a $15 million follow-on growth investment in Emplify, an employee engagement measurement and improvement company. Proceeds will accelerate go-to-market efforts, product expansion, and coaching support to empower clients to fully address the insights and analytics generated by the solution.

 

In the U.S., less than one-third of all employees are engaged, according to Gallup.  Actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. between $483 billion to $605 billion each year in lost productivity. Emplify blends technology, behavioral psychology, and data science with human insights to track, measure and identify actions to improve employee engagement, culture, retention and operating performance.

 

“To be competitive in this modern age, organizations need to do more to protect their internal brand and culture. Emplify’s blend of software with expert human advice yields people-powered business results that stand out among workplace technology platforms,” said Ryan Ziegler, General Partner at Edison Partners who led the investment.  “CEO Santiago Jaramillo has done a terrific job achieving significant growth milestones since our initial investment.  We’re proud to partner with the Emplify team as they continue to advance scalable and actionable solutions for employee measurement, including new advisory services, partnerships and coaching networks, which will be critical as more millennials step into supervisory roles and lead the workforce.”

 

Since launching in 2017, Emplify has recorded more than 275 percent average year-over-year revenue growth and has more than 300 clients across industries and organizations where people are the biggest assets, including financial services, healthcare, technology, professional services and real estate.  The company has recently added key executive roles, including an SVP of Sales and VP Marketing, and plans to increase its workforce by 40 percent by the end of the year.

 

“At Emplify, we’ve confirmed that an engaged workforce results in lower turnover, higher productivity and improved business outcomes. Our platform demonstrably improves engagement, culture and performance while making work more engaging and meaningful for employees,” said Santiago Jaramillo, co-founder and CEO of Emplify. “We’re thrilled to continue expanding our partnership with Ryan and the Edison team as we tackle the biggest challenge employers face today: building an employee experience that attracts, engages and retains top talent.”

 

Emplify is the fifth Edison Partners investment in Midwest-based companies over the last 16 months.  Additional investments include Bento for Business, Blue Medora, NS8 and Sigstr.  The investment in Emplify also makes Edison Partners one of the top growth equity firms in Indiana in terms of invested capital.  Venture capital flowing into Indiana-based technology companies has nearly tripled from less than $50 million in 2015, to $135 million in 2018, according to Techpoint Index. Edison has been investing in companies outside of Silicon Valley and big cities for 30-plus years.

 

“We’re focused on investing in underserved, fast-rising markets outside of Silicon Valley — including Indiana. Emplify has benefitted from strong engineering and business talent in the area, and has built a customer-funded business with sustainable growth and exciting upside developing the workplace technology market,” Ziegler added.

 

Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 200 private companies, a third of which have been in the enterprise solutions space.  Edison’s current enterprise solutions portfolio includes ATS, Blue Medora, Bricata, Budderfly, ExecVision, Jornaya, GAN Integrity, Giant Oak, Motionsoft, Northpass, PathFactory, NS8, Sigstr, Terminus and TripleLift.  Notable exits in the sector include Archive Systems, Billtrust, Dendrite, InSoft, eSentire, Fiberlink, Fishbowl, ItemMaster, Kemp, Logfire, M5, Mathsoft, NetProspex, Notable Solutions, Operative, Tangoe, Telarix, Uptivity, Virtual Edge, Vocus, and VFA.

 

About Emplify

Emplify’s data-driven employee engagement improvement solution helps executives and HR leaders make better people decisions and improve business results. Informed by science and

psychometrics, Emplify is the first to fuse a software platform, agile process, and expert human strategists into a data-proven employee engagement system — focused on achieving iterative business transformation through simple, actionable, and timely culture measurement and coaching. Emplify is trusted by leaders at top companies like Salesloft, Adaugeo and Ruoff Home Mortgage. Emplify was co-founded in 2015 by Santiago Jaramillo, bestselling author of Agile Engagement, and is backed by Edison Partners, Allos Ventures and Cultivation Capital. Emplify is based in Indianapolis, Ind., and is on a mission to help all people achieve their true potential at work.

 

About Edison Partners

For more than 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams grow and scale successful companies. The firm’s investment team brings extensive investing and operating experience to each investment. Through a unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating centers of excellence, the Edison Director Network, and executive education programs, Edison employs a truly integrated approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses.  A team of experts in enterprise software, financial technology, and healthcare IT sectors, Edison targets high-growth companies with $5 to $25 million in revenue; investments also include buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.

 

Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregated market value exceeding $10 billion. Edison Partners is based in Princeton, NJ and manages more than $1.4 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.

Ryan has been investing and advising technology companies for over 20 years. He leads the Enterprise Software and Vertical SaaS industry practice for Edison. He is a member of the Investment Committee, and helps lead and support the firm’s Governance Center of Excellence and Director Network (EDN). He manages growth equity investments within supply chain & logistics, enterprise infrastructure, data management, go-to-market software, digital commerce, verticalized marketplaces, and workplace technology segments.