Zoom acquired Workvivo, a six-year-old Irish firm that improves company culture and communications today. Deal terms were not revealed.
Workvivo emphasizes asynchronous communication, unlike real-time applications like Zoom. As a result, the platform’s activity feed, person directory, polls, and crucial business messaging are more about employee engagement than project-specific cooperation.
Workvivo, founded in Cork in 2017, counts Amazon, RyanAir, and Bupa as customers. Last year, Tiger Global led a $22 million Series B for the firm, which had raised almost $40 million. In 2019, Zoom founder, chairman, and CEO Eric Yuan made an angel investment, which may explain today’s statement.
Workvivo’s 2020 ARR increase of 200% was ideal for taking advantage of the worldwide pandemic’s remote-work revolution. So Zoom bought Workvivo for this purpose. Today, Zoom said organizations “need to think differently” to retain employees and develop a strong corporate culture.
“Today’s workforce is hybrid and distributed—with people working from home, in an office, at a remote location, on the frontlines of a retail floor or warehouse, as a pilot or flight attendant in an airplane, a nurse in a healthcare clinic, or anything in between,” it stated. In addition, today’s corporate climate requires engaging people and developing culture via connection.
Workvivo and Zoom both did well during the epidemic surge. In mid-2020, the video-communication powerhouse had a market worth of $160 billion, but like other IT businesses, it returned to its pre-pandemic average of $20 billion. Thus, Zoom stated in February that it was cutting off 15% of its personnel, or 1,300 individuals, citing its fast expansion during the epidemic and the worldwide economic upheaval that followed.
Zoom reported a 4% year-over-year revenue increase in its most recent results, while its growth has slowed. But Zoom is not resting on its laurels. Instead, Workvivo will direct Zoom into a slew of big-name enterprise clients while diversifying its product suite to support existing and new customers requiring real-time and asynchronous communication tools.
Zoom has had four acquisitions in its 12-year existence. Last year, it bought conversational AI firm Solvvy to enter the lucrative customer support market.
Zoom anticipates the Workvivo deal to finalize in the first quarter of its 2024 fiscal year next month. After that, it will integrate Workvivo’s functionality into Zoom, but it’s unclear how this would affect Workvivo’s independent platform. After the purchase, Workvivo founders John Goulding and Joe Lennon and their staff will join Zoom.
“Our focus is to integrate Workvivo into the Zoom platform, and we will look to streamline,” a Zoom spokesman told TechCrunch. “Workvivo staff will join Zoomies.”
