SocialChorus Announces $100 Million Investment Led by Sumeru Equity Partners

SocialChorus Announces $100 Million Investment Led by Sumeru Equity Partners

New Partnership Focused on Growth and Product Investment to Further SaaS Leadership in Workforce Communications and Unify the Digital Workplace

San Francisco, CA — July 15, 2020 — SocialChorus, the leader in workforce communications SaaS, today announced that Sumeru Equity Partners (SEP) — a growth-focused technology investment firm — along with existing investors, has led a $100 million investment in the company to accelerate growth and product innovation. Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The investment will enable SocialChorus to continue its significant momentum of 50% year-over-year growth in both 2018 and 2019, which has accelerated in 2020. Hundreds of customers use SocialChorus today — including 10 of the Fortune 50 — to power their workforce communications, reaching millions of workers across 165 countries with their most important company information from the world’s most advanced communications platform. With SocialChorus, enterprises can create and publish communications once in the platform, automatically send that content to any employee channel including mobile apps, intranets, email and more, and measure the impact across channels.

As part of the investment, majority shareholder SEP will add principals John Brennan, George Kadifa and Mark Haller to SocialChorus’ board of directors. “SEP has long followed the development of the workforce communications market, in which SocialChorus has been a leader and pioneer,” said Brennan, Kadifa and Haller. “Due to rapid shifts in the workplace, which have only accelerated with COVID-19, we believe SocialChorus’ next-generation software will be an invaluable resource for its customers. We are highly enthusiastic about partnering with Gary and the SocialChorus team to lead a new chapter of continued growth.”

As enterprises adapt to a constantly shifting landscape, SocialChorus’ recent growth has been driven by the digital transformation underway among large enterprises. According to a McKinsey survey, 70% of business transformation initiatives do not reach their goals; so, of the $1.3 trillion IDC projects businesses will spend on digital transformation this year, over $900 billion could go to waste. The leading reason for these failures is a lack of digital capabilities needed to support them.

“Digital transformation is reliant on human transformation, which can only happen if an organization’s communication infrastructure enables them to reach, align and mobilize all of their people. This is easy to say and difficult to do,” said Gary Nakamura, SocialChorus CEO and board director. “At SocialChorus, we are excited to partner with SEP to expand our market-leading product innovation, customer success and go-to-market strategies to meet the needs of today’s global enterprises.”

As large organizations grapple with their own change initiatives, having a workforce communications platform that can improve the ROI of existing technology investments is critical. SocialChorus allows business, IT, HR and communications teams to improve employee engagement and mobilize around key business objectives to achieve this widespread transformation.

“The combination of SocialChorus with Microsoft Office 365 allows our communications team and functional leaders to publish, target and streamline delivery of content and information to all caregivers — across our Microsoft endpoints,” said BJ Moore, chief information officer, Providence Health & Services. “In addition, unified analytics give us the ability to show how communications are driving our strategic initiatives, including our digital transformation.”

SocialChorus’ financial backers Kohlberg Ventures and Arrowroot Capital will continue as significant investors in the company, alongside the founders and management. GCA Advisors served as financial advisor to SocialChorus, while Union Square Advisors served as financial advisor to SEP.

About SocialChorus

SocialChorus is the leading workforce communications platform that enables organizations to accelerate and accomplish their business initiatives by reaching, aligning, and mobilizing every worker. We believe a mobilized enterprise is one in which companies can react quickly to change, aligning their workers, and giving them the right information, at the right time, in the right place, to achieve their business objectives. Communicators and leaders can focus on the message, while the platform ensures the content is acted on in a measurable way. SocialChorus helps the world’s largest global companies transform the way they communicate with millions of employees every day. Learn more at firstup.io.

About Sumeru Equity Partners

Sumeru Equity Partners (“SEP”) is a technology-focused private equity firm that invests in middle market companies across software, technology-enabled services and hardware. The firm employs a growth-oriented partnership model with technology companies and typically invests $25-200 million per transaction. The firm was founded in 2014 by an experienced team from Silver Lake Sumeru, a private equity fund started in 2007 within Silver Lake. SEP has a longstanding history of investing and partnering with founders and management teams to build growth leaders. SEP has backed leading software companies such as ForeFlight, GoGuardian, Azuga, Blackline, Talend, Kyriba and Buildium. For more information about SEP and its full portfolio, please visit www.sumeruequity.com.

Media Contacts

North America

Sheridan Smalley
LEWIS PR for SocialChorus
socialchorus@teamlewis.com
415-432-2477

Jeff Fox
The Blueshirt Group for Sumeru Equity Partners
jeff@blueshirtgroup.com
415-828-8298

Europe

Victoria Melville
Melville Communications for SocialChorus
socialchorus@melvillecommunications.co.uk
+44 (0)1483 489009

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