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June 10, 2014
Foundation Capital
When we first invested in Visier back in 2011, it was a small, promising 1-year-old startup with an ambitious vision. Now, it’s an award-winning developer of analytics solutions in the cloud for the HR needs of a long list of companies, including Commonwealth Bank of Australia, S&P Global, Micron, Time Inc. and Synopsys.
I am proud to continue supporting Visier as it closes its Series C financing. It has raised $25.5 million in this round, bringing its total funding to date to $49.5 million.
Visier, in my opinion, is the future of analytics. It’s the new way to plan and manage a workforce. It’s an easy sell. The old way, the more conventional way, uses SQL, expensive data warehouses, and is IT driven. And it can take a long time to see any results — six months or more. The new way, Visier’s way, is easy to understand and work with, is significantly cheaper to subscribe to and maintain, and here’s the part that will amaze anyone who’s worked on big data projects: Visier’s solution can go live in 4 weeks! It’s in the cloud, and can pull data from a vast number of sources. It has a beautiful UI, which will make you want to use it to study and predict trends in your workforce.
Clearly, I’m not the only one who’s impressed. In just the past year, Visier has doubled its customer base — it has more than 40 customers now — and has expanded its workforce. It recently opened a new office in San Jose, a short drive from where we’re based.
CEO John Schwarz says he wants to go broader and deeper with the money he’s raised. He’s going to step on the accelerator, both in the product and the markets they serve. I’m keen to see what he and the team do next.
His team released two new products last year — one for workforce planning and one for benchmarking. I’ve been pleased with them. His team, with key executives from Business Objects/SAP, has experience, vision and enthusiasm, and I have no doubt that they will change the face of HR (and business intelligence, of course) as we know it.
We’ve stayed the course with Visier through every round of financing so far, and I’m thrilled to extend our partnership with them. Congratulations, John and the Visier family!