Early Stage Companies: One Year On – AskNicely

We won “Emerging Company of the Year” at the NZ Hi-Tech Awards, doubled headcount to 50 across two offices (in Portland and Auckland), raised a US$10m Series A and restructured to become a US company, headquartered in Portland (where co-founder & CEO, Aaron Ward, relocated to).

Three rounds totalling more than US$15m.

• Angel (Ice Angels, Angel HQ, Enterprise Angels, NZVIF & K1W1)
• Seed (led by Blackbird Ventures plus existing investors)
• Series A (led by Nexus Ventures in Silicon Valley plus existing investors)

We’ve doubled our staff numbers over the past year. Investment in product and engineering (Auckland) has helped us accelerate delivery of our product vision and further differentiate our offering against old-school competitors. Investment in sales and customer success teams means we can support mid-market and enterprise customers

We’ve been in Auckland since 2014 and Portland since 2017. We moved offices in Portland twice over the past year as we kept outgrowing it. Now we’re looking for bigger space again in both locations.

We’re focused on winning the global title for NPS (how businesses measure the quality of their customer experience). That means investing in product to expand our lead on competitors and aggressively accelerating growth in our key international markets (US, Australia, Europe).

Doubling headcount and maintaining a “play to win” culture across two countries is tricky! Our approach is committing to a clear vision, applying “extreme feedback” principles to learn fast and staying true to the brand values that fuel our differentiation.

For more about AskNicely, click here.