The company's proceeds from the investment round will be used to shore up the company's cash position as a safeguard against the COVID-19 pandemic and continue in-house product development
FREMONT, CA: HR and It management platform Rippling secured USD 145 million in a Series B funding round led by Founders Fund. The round was also participated by Greenoaks Capital, Coatue Management, Bedrock Capital, and existing investors including Kleiner Perkins, Initialized Capital, and Y Combinator. The Series B investment round raised the company's valuation to USD 1.35 billion. As part of the investment round, Founders Fund partner Napoleon Ta will join Rippling's board of directors.
The company's proceeds from the investment round will be used to shore up the company's cash position as a safeguard against the COVID-19 pandemic and continue in-house product development. The funds will help the company to continue the in house product development and add more tools organically rather than through acquisitions. Rippling firmly believes that managing HR employee data is part of proper management and IT data permissions and device provision.
"We will double down on R&D but to be honest we're trying not to change the formula too much," said CEO Parker Conrad. "We want to have that discipline. This fundraising was opportunistic amid the larger macroeconomic risk at the moment. I was working at startups in 2008-2009 and the funding markets are strong right now, all things considered, and so we wanted to make sure we had the stockpile we needed in case things went bad."
Rippling's new valuation is a significant jump from the company's previous valuation of USD 270 million from a year ago when it raised USD 45 million. Conrad has significant experience in taking startups into unicorn territory and has also achieved the same during his time at Zenefits.
"Rippling is not just a superior payroll company, but something much broader: they've built the system of record for all employee data, creating an entirely new software category. Rippling's massive market opportunity is to streamline the employee life cycle, from software to payroll to benefits, and fundamentally improve the way businesses hire and manage their employees," said Napoleon Ta.
