When Values and Mission Align
Our investment relationship with Workvivo ends today as the company has been acquired, but our respect for the founders, John Goulding and Joe Lennon, and all the team there will live on.
Our journey with Workvivo started when Frontline invested in 2019, but I had the good fortune to have worked with Joe in a prior startup, so knew how capable he was. When I first met John (CEO) he was wildly ambitious, with a track record of delivering, yet was notably humble.
As well as investing at Pre-Seed and Seed stage in Europe, Frontline invests in IPO track companies at Growth stage in the US, so we see where the global competition bar lies. Whilst this team was based in Cork — not California — they were clearly world-class.
In 2019 the company had just 10 employees (today 140), but was already operating like a much bigger firm. Plans were clear and written down for all to see, progress was tracked against targets, hiring decisions were very deliberate and made in time to deliver on company objectives.
The first slide of the team’s Seed round pitch deck described how the product would “Connect employees with your organization’s goals”, and it was clear they lived by that internally, too.
But in the end, Frontline will only invest in a company if we believe it could become the global category leader. Based on customer calls, engagement metrics and product vision, we believed that Workvivo could.
When values & mission align
Workvivo has invariably been a values-driven company. The values centred around creating a high trust working environment and seeking high performance from the team. This line in particular always stood out to me as it reflected how they approached problems:
“The company is at its best when a challenge seems impossible but we make it possible.”
With any acquisition, the true long term success hinges not on product position in market or quarterly sales, but on values and mission alignment between the two organisations. In this acquisition more than in any other I have been involved with it really feels like values and mission are fully aligned. That will be a superpower as the companies come together.
Having reached over one million employees on the Workvivo platform already, today is a special day for the company as it marks the start of a new adventure, one which has a path to changing employee happiness for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
From all of us at Frontline to John, Joe and all of the Workvivo team, thank you for having us on the journey. We are so excited to see what these two great companies and cultures create in the years to come.
