Right in time for its yearly Digital Disruption user conference taking part in Park City, HireVue announced a new round of funding.
Let’s dissect the press release in our usual commentary style:

SILICON SLOPES, UTAH (June 2, 2015) – Team Acceleration software provider HireVue, today announced it has closed $45 million in Series E funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), a leading provider of growth equity for premier technology companies and investors in Zillow, Netflix, ExactTarget and Facebook. HireVue’s previous investors, including Sequoia Capital, Granite Ventures, Investor Growth Capital, Peterson Ventures and Rose Park Advisors’ Disruptive Innovation Fund also participated in the round. Nari Ansari, a principal at TCV, will join HireVue’s board of directors.

MyPOV – A great list of VC investors is putting in more money into HireVue. Good VCs are not a guarantee for success, but increase the likeliness of success. So a good sign that HireVue keeps attracting capital from successful investors.

Today, HireVue also announced the launch of its Team Acceleration Software, which puts the power to build and coach great teams, fueled by digital video and predictive data analytics, directly in the hands of business managers everywhere.

MyPOV – So HireVue is going beyond its traditional scope of video recruiting, where the vendor originally started 10+ years ago, into a larger automation space, the overall productivity of teams. And in the twenty-first century that means that teams need to accelerate, do more with less and faster. So Team Acceleration is a good name for a new category it looks like HireVue is trying to create.

“The new world is about empowering managers and teams - not slowing them down with administrative tasks like time tracking, compliance, benefits and payroll,” said Mark Newman, founder and CEO, HireVue. “Team Acceleration is the way and philosophy that today’s most successful companies are built on. The market opportunity is even bigger than talent management. HireVue customers grow faster, are more profitable, and deliver awesome customer experiences by building and coaching the world’s best teams through our platform. We’re excited to partner with TCV as we push to our next phase of growth and put the power of our Team Acceleration software in the hands of business leaders everywhere.”

MyPOV – Good to hear Newman describing that space. And he is likely right with the Team Acceleration market being bigger than the traditional Talent Management market, which struggles by itself with the failure of the first wave of Talent Management that mostly did not succeed transforming enterprises talent management practices. In the end, more managers care about their team’s productivity than about classic talent management, which in many cases is being perceived as something coming ‘from the top’ and needing to be done ‘for the boss’. Getting done with more work and getting home earlier, or to have more free time in general, are more desirable and attractive for managers.

The funding and Team Acceleration software launch capitalize on other recent company momentum including:
· Named one of the Top “10 Most Promising Companies in America” by Forbes
· Named the fourth fastest-growing cloud app of the first quarter of 2015, alongside mainstream apps including FitBit and Slack.*
· Record fiscal year 2014 growth
· Working with approximately 25 percent of the Fortune 100
· Hosted its second Annual Digital Disruption user conference


MyPOV – Congrats to the HireVue management team and employees to these accolades.

Overall MyPOV

Software vendors are often compelled to create their own category, and then trying to define it to their own advantages. Certainly legitimate and HireVue is no exception, but the more successful attempts to this approach are characterized by a substantial need for the category in the market. And here HireVue is spot on – individuals and teams need to accelerate, both out of their own, self-preserving intrinsic motivation, as well as a demands coming from the outside, from management. Even more importantly, HireVue has a very good record in the recruiting space and even more importantly in using ‘true’ analytics to its advantage (more here). 
 
Congratulations to HireVue on funding and the launch of a new category, we will be watching how well the vendor will be able to fill the vision and then execute to the advantage of its customers. 
 

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