Reflektive raises $13M to make performance reviews real-time

The Reflektive Talent Development Platform makes feedback continuous and customizable

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Having now been what would be considered a professional writer for a few years now, I've come to learn those two dreaded words: performance review. Oh no!

Actually, I'm just kidding. it's really not that bad, and getting feedback on how you're doing is every important. The worst thing about it is that, for most workers, it only comes once a year, so if they're doing something wrong they won't even know it until it might be too late.

Reflektive is trying to bring performance reviews into this century and it just raised a $13 million Series A round of funding to do it.

The funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, and included participation from existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. It comes only eight months after the company raised its last round of funding, a $3.6 million round in October of last year. With this latest funding, the company has now raised $17 million in total.

Reflektive wants to change the way the feedback process works by being a communication platform for employees to give each other continuous feedback and recognition, rather than only having it done one time per year. The data is then compiled at to pre-populate a performance review.

Whereas traditional HR software has been built for HR, and not for employees, Reflektive's goal is to build a more engaged workforce, and to that it makes these systems organically driven by employees rather than HR. That is why Reflektive makes it software for employees, and not HR departments. 

In addition to the funding, Reflektive also announced the launch of the a new platform to make it even easier for employees to get feedback.

Called the Reflektive Talent Development Platform, it is a continuous performance solution that includes real-time feedback, so that they don't have to go to a separate app to use the service. Instead it will integrate with other applications, including e-mail. It also lets employees give feedback to each other at any time. 

It also includes customizable Performance Reviews, with targeted questions; the ability to set up specific goals and objectives, and performance check-ins, which give employees and managers "better structure for tracking goal progress and stimulating more frequent development conversations."

Launched in 2014, Reflektive has been growing quickly. It has multiplied its revenue by 10X year-over-year. It has also now surpassed 150 customers including Ubisoft, CreditKarma, Pinterest, Braintree, Twilio, Flatiron Health, Ultragenyx, Glassdoor, MuleSoft, Quantcast, Thumbtack, Hearsay Social, Doctor on Demand, Quora, AltSchool, SquareTrade, Blue Jeans Network, Digital Ocean, Mixpanel, Instacart, Xamarin and Lyft. That is triple the number of customers it had in October.

Reflektive says it will use the new funding to accelerate development of its platform, enhance customer success and hire across all departments.

When I spoke to him a few months ago, Rajeev Behera, CEO of Reflektive, told me that his goal is to take the fear out of the performance review, allowing them to transition to a new type of feedback.

“A lot of people dislike the annual review. Reflektive not only provides an alternative that fits better with the way people work now, but we also provide the opportunity for change management," said Behera.

"Customers can start with an annual review, and add real-time feedback to augment it. Then after they feel comfortable with that, they can remove the annual review, and replace it with only real-time feedback and what we call 'check-ins,' which are conversations around performance between managers and employees. By servicing both the old annual review and the new way of giving feedback, we make it easy for customers to make the transition at whatever pace they choose." 

(Image source: reflektive.com)