HOUSTON—-GoCo, the easiest to use all-in-one HR and benefits platform, today announced a $7 million Series A funding round led by ATX Seed Ventures alongside the investment arm of UpCurve, Inc. (“UpCurve”), the small and medium-sized business (SMB) solutions provider, among other strategic investors. The new capital will be allocated to hiring across all departments, further platform development to extend the breadth of offerings and to broadly expand the company’s customer base.
“UpCurve’s investment in GoCo demonstrates our commitment to empowering businesses with the best technology solutions, and after a year of carefully vetting dozens of potential HR tech platforms, we found GoCo to be the most intuitive and robust on the market,” said Peter Cannone, CEO of UpCurve. “Investing in and potentially partnering with GoCo to bring it to our vast network of businesses was an easy decision. The company reimagines modern HR at its finest, and we look forward to helping spur GoCo’s rapid growth.”
UpCurve is the wholly owned subsidiary of New Media Investment Group Inc., focused on delivering guided technology solutions to SMBs. In addition to the Series A investment, UpCurve and GoCo are exploring a partnership to bring GoCo’s technology to UpCurve’s nationwide business distribution network as the premier HR solution, which could enable GoCo to leverage New Media’s 200,000+ active customer relationships and local markets reach to an additional 5 million SMB potential customers, and exponentially grow GoCo’s customer base.
GoCo’s mandate to modernize HR and revamp the benefits management experience
Over the past two years, GoCo has grown its customer base of employers into the thousands, increasing the number of individual GoCo users by 10x. Customers of all sizes and verticals have adopted the platform, including retail and gym franchises, school districts, technology companies, real estate brokerages, healthcare hospitality organizations and more. To support this rapid growth, GoCo plans to quadruple its number of employees in 2019.
This Series A round brings GoCo’s total funding to $12.5 million. GoCo is backed by additional investments from Salesforce Ventures, Corp Strategics, GIS Strategic Ventures, the venture arm of Guardian Life Insurance, and Digital Insurance, the largest employee benefits-only company in the US. ATX Seed Ventures is investing for the second time.
“We are doubling down on our investment in GoCo, as it is positioned to become the platform of choice for HR professionals to break out of the chains of outdated and complex HR duties, and empowers them to spend more time on their employees and higher value tasks. GoCo is simply the best platform solution to do all this, and their increasing customer base supports it,” said Chris Shonk, managing partner at ATX Seed Ventures.
GoCo was founded in 2015 by CEO Nir Leibovich, Chief Technology Officer Jason Wang and Chief Product Officer Michael Gugel. It is the fusion of modern, paperless HR functions like employee onboarding, secure cloud-storage document management, eSignature workflows, time-off tracking and HR data reporting. As well, it is paired with simplified benefits enrollment and management, payroll sync and HR compliance enablement. The web and mobile based app empower employers to give employees 24/7 access to the full spectrum of a company’s HR and benefits offerings.
As well, the company has a solid partnership network with employee benefit insurance agencies like OneDigital and PayneWest, and general agencies like Word & Brown, to offer GoCo’s technology as an enhancement to their existing insurance benefits services clients. GoCo also auto-syncs with leading payroll providers ADP, PayChex, Paylocity, Intuit Quickbooks and more, thus uniquely enabling businesses to maintain their benefits broker and payroll provider by integrating with GoCo’s platform.
“This Series A and the potential addition of UpCurve’s distribution channel to reach hundreds of thousands of new customers continues our mission to free SMBs and HR professionals from outdated and tedious administrative burdens. When these professionals look at current HR and benefits solutions on the market and think ‘there must be a better way,’ we are the better way,” said Leibovich. “We want to be synonymous with modern and streamlined HR.”
About UpCurve
UpCurve provides small to mid-sized businesses with a full suite of products and services that support stronger growth, greater productivity and company-wide efficiency. UpCurve’s products include digital marketing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and integration, marketing automation, cloud solutions, voice and email communication offerings, and small business financing. UpCurve, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of New Media Investment Group Inc. For more information regarding UpCurve, please visit www.UpCurve.com.
About ATX Seed Ventures
ATX Seed Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm specializing in Texas. The company’s investments focus on software, IoT, e-commerce and mobile applications. ATX Seed Ventures was created by expert entrepreneurs to serve emerging entrepreneurs. Visit www.atxseedventures.com.
About GoCo
GoCo is the easiest to use all-in-one HR and benefits platform for businesses. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Houston, TX, the company’s mission is to help businesses and their employees gain freedom from scattered, complex, and outdated systems by delivering a delightful experience. Visit www.goco.io, follow GoCo on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.