Kadence, a hybrid working software company, announced their raise of $10M in a Seed funding round. The investment round is led by Kickstart Fund with major participation from Manta Ray, Hambro Perks, and Vectr7 Investment Partners as well as Shadow Ventures and Forward VC. Kadence also attracted notable future of work angel investors including Cal Henderson, Co-Founder and CTO at Slack, Shaun Ritchie, CEO and Founder of Teem, and Nick Bloom, Stanford professor, research leader, and worldwide authority on remote work.
Kadence coordinates people, places, and projects to help employees be in the right place at the right time with the right people – to get their best work done. Kadence believes that the future of work lies in finding a rhythm that works for both employers and employees, which is why their product gives people the power to choose when they work, where they work, and who they work with.
“The last 12 months of hybrid have all been about creating order out of chaos,” says Dan Bladen, CEO, and Founder of Kadence. “Companies are now trying to figure out how to move from ‘order’ to ‘optimization’ and make the ‘way’ they work a competitive advantage. Companies that will win in the hybrid age will understand that the office is no longer the platform for work; the platform for work is now time (the working week) – companies that don’t get hybrid right won’t survive.”
Kadence has grown from 0 to 300 customers in the last 18 months, from governments to fast-growing tech unicorns like Collibra and Starling Bank. Kadence has helped companies reduce expensive office space by 68% while also increasing the number of employees coming into the office to collaborate by 25% month over month. Recently, a Kadence customer received an ESG award because of the positive environmental impact of the way they are doing hybrid.
“Never before in history have humans changed how they work at such a scale and in such a short space,” says Nick Bloom, a new Kadence investor. “There is no doubt hybrid is now the way the world is going to work going forwards, and Kadence has honed in on the most important aspect of hybrid—that hybrid should enable better outcomes for companies as a whole, not just facilities managers. Their focus on the coordination of people is where the market is heading.”
Pivoting in the pandemic
Kadence charges ahead tirelessly to build the future of work with a resilience that only a mid-pandemic pivot could fuel. Dan moved his family from the UK to California in late 2019 to grow the company previously known as Chargifi. When the pandemic froze the market and customers began canceling orders, Dan needed to reinvent the business.
“Four months after we moved to Silicon Valley, our world changed forever,” Dan says. “We had been building Chargifi for seven years, but when the pandemic hit, demand completely dried up and it wasn’t clear when or if it would ever come back—but we couldn’t afford to just sit on our hands and hope everything would be ok.”
Hybrid work was still fresh when the team decided to repurpose the software and products they had already built for managing wireless charging networks in offices. It was the perfect opportunity to repurpose the software for hot-desk management, and by the end of 2020, Chargifi had launched the first version of Kadence.
“And it’s working,” Jeff Gwinnett, Senior Director of Workplace and Sustainability at Softchoice, a Kadence customer says, “Our team loves Kadence. It’s simple and intuitive to use and is powering our hybrid strategy nationwide—we’ve already recommended Kadence to many other companies!”
“Companies around the world are reimagining the way they work,” says Cal Henderson, Co-Founder, and CTO at Slack and a new Kadence investor. “And as the world goes hybrid, it’s important that teams find a rhythm for meeting in person for collaboration and creativity. Kadence is an important part of helping companies make hybrid work, and I’m excited to be involved.”
Kadence’s lead investor, Kickstart Fund, recently welcomed its newest General Partner. Making Kadence her first venture investment was an obvious decision. “Having the opportunity to back companies like Kadence is why I got into venture capital,” Kat says. “The grit, fortitude, and imagination that Dan and the team have shown to pivot, keep the team together, and achieve this level of sales success in such a short amount of time are extraordinary. They’re building something of true significance.”
Kadence’s passion for powering people and organizations continued from their time as Chargifi. Their vision to empower human flourishing at work and home, coupled with this new round of funding, enables them to serve more customers and develop new tools to power the future of work.
George Davies, Partner at Hambro Perks and investor at Kadence says; “Hybrid work needs beautiful software that is focussed on people and how they work. Kadence is that software, and we are proud to back a team with the vision and grit to deliver.”
At Kadence, we believe the way we work should lift us up, not lock us in, enabling people to flourish in everything they do. By building the operating system for the future of work, we improve the coordination of people, time, and space to help teams feel trusted and empowered to make the best choices about how, when, and where they get their best work done.
