Ally.io Helps Connect Employees With OKRs After $50M Raise

Seattle-based Ally.io closed a $50 million Series C to help businesses execute on strategies and reach their goals.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

The new round was led by Greenoaks Capital. Tiger Global — who led Ally.io’s Series B — and Madrona Venture Group also joined the round, as well as previous investors Accel, Addition Ventures, Founders’ Co-Op and Vulcan Capital. The company has raised $76 million to date.

While companies are focused on objectives and key results (OKRs), the three-year-old SaaS company helps connect those goals from the strategic upper levels all the way down to frontline workers in order for employees to know how they can contribute. The platform integrates with work tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams so employee teams can stay on track with those goals and see progress.

“We want to bring purpose and productivity to work,” said founder and CEO Vetri Vellore.

Money to grow

Ally.io closed its $15 million Series B in October 2019 and still had almost all of that money in the bank, Vellore said. However, with the company realizing 3.3x revenue growth last year and receiving inbound investment interest, Vellore said he felt the timing was right to raise — especially when considering the investors in the round.

“These are people who can help us grow the company,” he said.

Soma Somasegar, managing director at Madrona Venture Group, said he has followed Ally.io for years as it became a player in the “future of work” space.

“We believe there is a secular trend towards OKRs and a new set of tools that will enable high performing organizations to drive strategic and operational alignment,” he said. “Over the years, we’ve closely tracked (Vellore’s) progress and are impressed with the combination of a simple and powerful product that the team at Ally has built.”

Expanding market

While Ally.io has a variety of competitors like Workboard and Betterworks, the company has seen significant traction in the market — especially as the pandemic forced employees to work apart and maintaining goals became more difficult, Vellore said.

The company was able to add more than 500 customers in the last year, as the pandemic accelerated the transformation to remote work, Vellore said.

Somasegar sees significant opportunity ahead for Ally.io as the business world becomes more OKR-centric.

“While there are a number of OKR companies that have popped up over the past few years, we believe Ally is the best product on the market today,” he said. “Ally is used and well understood by all levels of employees from product managers to executive leadership.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.