Sapho raises $14M in oversubscribed Series B financing to continue transforming how people work
Felicis Ventures joins existing investors to help Sapho accelerate the future of work and expand its global enterprise sales team
SAN BRUNO, California, April 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Sapho announced that it has closed $14M in Series B funding led by Caffeinated Capital. The new funds will be used to build a global sales team and further Sapho's goals of tripling the productivity and effectiveness of the enterprise workforce. Sapho empowers employees with a modern portal experience that surfaces relevant tasks and data using micro apps. Sapho micro apps – built by IT on top of existing systems and delivered to any device, intranet, or messenger – simplify workflows and data access, allowing employees to complete work faster and make better decisions.
"Employee productivity has been stagnant for 20 years, despite advancements in hardware and software," said Bill Coleman, CEO of Veritas, former Founder and CEO of BEA Systems, and Sapho board member. "It is clear, a new relationship with enterprise software – not simply software that is run on smaller devices or in the cloud – is needed to help the workforce get more done in less time. Two years ago, I saw that Sapho was doing something special to enable employees to make smarter decisions and complete tasks based on enterprise systems that were already in place. Today, their solution is effectively becoming an operating system for work, creating the connective tissue between systems of record and the end user."
Enterprises like Boral, HCL, and Turner Broadcast Systems use Sapho to modernize their legacy systems, simplify workflows, and enable smarter, data-based decisions by making their enterprise systems more user-friendly and accessible. Organizations that use Sapho experience increased software utilization, lower helpdesk costs, reduced license costs, and fewer system bottlenecks as employees benefit from a single view into all the systems they need to excel at work.
"Prior to implementing Sapho, our sales workforce was not realizing the full value of our existing enterprise systems, even though these systems had the information they needed to successfully engage new prospects and close new business," said Brian Below, President of Light Building Products, a division of Boral® Industries. "Now we use Sapho to provide our sales teams with a single, simple interface that pushes workflows to them while also allowing them to access all of their system data and tasks. The results have been impressive. Sapho has enabled us to drive our weekly software utilization to over 90 percent, and getting the right information and tasks to our team has decreased our sales cycle, increased conversion rates, and provided better data on the effectiveness of our marketing initiatives."
"While today's enterprise systems of record are great at storing and manipulating data – they are not great at presenting that data and associated work flows back to employees in an easy-to-use way," said Fouad ElNaggar, CEO and Co-Founder of Sapho. "While current systems of record have rock solid back ends, if employees hate the front end and refuse to use them, the systems themselves become useless for a majority of workers. This is why a new system of engagement is needed – one that sits on top of systems of record and aggregates data and tasks and delivers it to employees. Sapho is this new system of engagement: it provides employees a modern portal experience with the personalized information and tasks they need to improve their productivity and effectiveness. Employees love it because Sapho makes work as easy as using Facebook and IT departments love it because it works with the existing systems they know how to maintain and manage. For our customers, this means major productivity gains from their IT investments which have already been depreciated on their balance sheets."
This funding comes on the heels of significant momentum for Sapho since its launch in June 2016. The company saw 320 percent revenue growth and 200 percent customer growth in 2016 and in 2017, has completed integrations with companies like Microsoft and IBM to further modernize the workplace for enterprise customers. To take this growth to the next level, Sapho is also announcing that Mike Carpenter, CrowdStrike President of Global Sales and Field Operations will join the Sapho advisory board to help Sapho build out a global sales organization. In addition to Caffeinated Capital, new investor Felicis Ventures joins the round with expanded investments from Alsop Louie Partners, SoftTech VC, Morado Ventures, AME Cloud, and Bloomberg Beta.
"I have seen Sapho's traction firsthand with Fortune 500 customers looking to modernize their existing systems and improve employee productivity," said Raymond Tonsing, Founder and Managing Director of Caffeinated Capital. "As someone who is always on the lookout for transformational companies with exceptional founders and a world-class team, I believe Sapho is in the right spot to transform enterprise systems while also fundamentally improving how people work. I was the first angel investor in Sapho over three years ago and when I saw an opportunity to deepen my relationship with the company, I leapt at it."
About Sapho
Sapho empowers the enterprise workforce with a modern portal experience that triples productivity and accelerates the speed of business. Using micro apps that surface personalized and relevant tasks from existing systems to any device, intranet, or messenger, Sapho gives employees a single view into the important information they need to complete work faster and make better decisions. Sapho is used by customers in all industries to streamline their internal workflows, enable smart decision-making, and increase employee effectiveness and productivity. Sapho was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in San Bruno, CA. For more information, visit www.sapho.com.
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