Career progression startup Pando raises $6.9m to give employees control over their career paths

Pando, the just-in-time career progression platform, announced it has raised a total of $6.9 million led by Craft Ventures with participation from Lerer Hippeau, GFC, Correlation Ventures, and additional strategic investors including Jane Alexander CMO at Carta, Ashkay Kothari COO at Notion, and Des Traynor Co-founder at Intercom. The new funds will be used to expand the engineering team and to build out the go-to-market function to drive customer acquisition.

The HR tech market is booming, with more than 12.1 million employers in the U.S. alone spending over $5 trillion on tech applications such as payroll, benefits and training. Yet even with all the software and services being provided to attract, hire, train, and retain employees, there is still one significant missing piece in the HR tech stack: career progression.

In addition to the rapid shift to remote and hybrid work brought on by the pandemic, today's business environment is still marked with the Great Resignation as well as the societal injustices resulting in employees demanding equity in pay and promotions. It's not just about career progression, it's about fair progression for all employees. That means more structure and transparency–and less politics and bias.

"Performance bell curves, the lack of structure, real-time calibration, and data resulting in the black box which was employee promotions frustrated me for years" says Barbra Gago, Founder and CEO at Pando. "It was this, coupled with my desire to bring agility to HR and democratize professional success, that Pando – the first and only career progression platform – was born."

Pando was created to address the universal need for building and scaling fair career progression–leveling the playing field for all employees. Pando brings accountability, transparency, and structure so employees can continuously progress, have a greater impact over time, and stay at the company longer, and stay at the company longer knowing they have a path.

With Pando, companies are now equipped with the tools they need to create individualized, fulfilling career progression plans contextualized through levels and competencies which empower employees to actually achieve the path they want while having the right impact on the business.

Lainy Painter, Partner, Craft Ventures: "We saw firsthand how forward-thinking startups are incorporating employee leveling and competency-based coaching into their HR stack earlier than ever. However, they are stuck building their structure from scratch in Excel. Barbra and team have built a solution for this: Pando transforms career progression from manual and error-prone to easy and effective."

Since its founding in late 2020, Pando has been growing quickly, and has built up a global team with hubs in San Francisco, New York, LA and Amsterdam. The company has on-boarded over 2,000 enterprise users, and customers including OysterHR, SHIPWELL, Codility, and casai.

Caitlin Strandberg, Partner, Lerer Hippeau: "Companies have endless resources to manage their business needs - finance dashboards, sales reporting, and even bug ticketing. But when it comes to a company's most valuable asset - its people - employers lack the tools to help their people progress in real-time. With Pando, employees have complete visibility into their career progression paths, can document their achievements, and seek contextual feedback. Pando shifts the performance management paradigm to focus on just-in-time progression, contributing hugely to engagement and retention."

www.pando.com