Earlier today, we announced the close of a $130 million Series C financing led by Andreessen Horowitz. We’re excited to add a16z, as well as ICONIQ Growth, to our list of investors – which includes Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Coatue, and General Catalyst.
Generational change and the new Hybrid era of work
A little over a year ago, the entire global knowledge workforce went remote and started working exclusively in the cloud – and, with no playbook, leadership teams figured it out as best they could. Now, it’s time to rethink how work happens, the tools that support work, and how the tools fit together.
This has been, and will continue to be, change on a generational scale. To successfully usher in this new era of work, companies need to find new ways to communicate and to build productive, happy, and scalable teams. Although some things are still uncertain, we know a few things to be true. Some are obvious, some less so. All inform what’s next for Loom.
1. Freedom: Work is an act, not a place
More people have had a chance to experience remote than ever before. It’s led to people up and down and all across organizations to have a new perspective on how work gets done. “Work wherever, whenever” isn’t theoretical anymore; it’s real and here to stay. When it’s leveraged properly, it grants freedom to the individual, and the productivity of an organization becomes more resilient.
2. Flexibility: Bring power to the people
Soon, offices will start reopening. Employees and teams will have the choice to be physically surrounded by their peers. Some organizations will require everyone to go back to entirely-in-office work, other organizations will remain fully remote. Some individuals will desire in-office much more, others will want to continue their remote experience. At the end of the day, the best people will choose companies that offer the most flexibility.
3. Culture: Every company is a Hybrid company
Most companies are Hybrid, whether we call them that or not. The question is simply where on the spectrum of Hybrid the company lands. Wherever that is, organizations should strive to enable all employees to engage from anywhere as a first-class citizen regardless if in the physical or digital world. It’s these organizations that will attract and retain the best talent, and win their markets.
Loom(s) to get work done wherever, whenever – without sacrificing creativity, productivity, or culture
The number of people who rely on Loom for a more efficient, expressive, effective way to communicate has grown more than 900% since early 2020. This includes enterprise customers like Netflix, Atlassian, JLL, Twitter, Olympus, Procter & Gamble, Lacoste, and more. These organizations use Loom across leadership teams, R&D, GTM, and operations to share updates, provide feedback, augment or replace meetings, and generally have more fun at work. We attribute almost all of this growth to our passionate user base who share Loom with peers (and fuel our world-class NPS of 75).
As every company shifts to Hybrid, we’re embracing our vision – to empower effective communication, wherever work happens – more than ever. Since 2016, we’ve obsessed over building end-to-end video messaging that's instant, delightful, powerful, and purpose-built for work. And five years later, it’s clear every individual, team, and company can benefit from asynchronous video.
Work culture should be grounded in the scarcity of time and value the importance of human connection. There is no more scarce resource in life than time. The beauty of Loom is that it enables employees to be drivers of their own time, but in a way that puts human connection front and center.
What’s next for Loom and our customers?
Even with 12 million users across 200,000+ companies, we’ve barely scratched the surface of the value that video can unlock for people at work. This new financing will enable us to continue our mission on a greater scale, bring on more Loommates, and share Loom with more users and companies around the world.
It especially means continued investment in our core platform. Here are three areas we’re excited to roll out in the coming months and year:
1. Organization & Discovery
We’re working on incorporating #tags and discovery experiences to help users find what they want to learn, and who they want to learn from, to get the full value of the hundreds of millions of videos already on Loom.
2. Platform & loomSDK
Our recordSDK will power richer, more seamless video workflows across the internet. Beyond that, we’ll continue to enable people and platforms to leverage the full value of Loom, no matter where they get their work done.
3. Hybrid Work Resources
It’s a complex time for organizations starting to navigate a post-pandemic world. As a Hybrid company run on Loom from the beginning, we’re ready to share our lessons learned. We aim to be a trusted partner to leaders investing in strong cultures and team communication to fuel the best work in this new reality.
Video really is a bottomless treasure trove to unlock. We’re grateful to serve the teams and organizations who trust Loom with their day-to-day communication. We’re excited to have the resources to continue to serve them in deeper and more meaningful ways.
If any of this sounds interesting, please come join us!