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Dynamic Signal raises $36.5 million from Microsoft Ventures, others to help companies engage with employees


Dynamic Signal announced that it has raised $36.5 million for its employee communication and engagement platform in a round of funding from Microsoft Ventures, Cisco Investments, Time Warner Investments, Adams Street Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Venrock.

Founded in 2010, Dynamic Signal offers a platform that lets companies easily communicate messages to their workers, including videos and surveys, and is powered by alerts and push notifications. Employees are also encouraged to engage with content by commenting, “liking,” and sharing through their own social profiles on other platforms.

Above: Dynamic Signal

The San Bruno, California-based startup claims that more than a fifth of the Fortune 100 use Dynamic Signal, with big-name customers including Fedex, IBM, Oracle, Intel, Samsung, Sprint, and SAP.

Additionally, Dynamic Signal today announced a number of new features and products, including a newsletter creation tool, along with DySi Open, a new standalone mobile app aimed at marketing, HR, and communication professionals that serves up content around best practices, market trends, and more. It also allows professionals to connect with each other and share insights.

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DySi Open app

Above: DySi Open app

Though there is no shortage of tools that allow companies to disseminate information to employees — from email to enterprise social networks and intranets — Dynamic Signal goes beyond being another “Facebook for work” by integrating with software such as Microsoft’s SharePoint, Salesforce, Adobe, Bitly, Jive, Oracle, SAP, Slack, Yammer, Facebook, and a host of intranet providers. Indeed, Dynamic Signal’s raison d’être isn’t to replace other enterprise social networks. Instead, it serves a slightly different purpose that is less about peer-to-peer communication and more about enabling companies to get information to employees and measure their engagement.

“Dynamic Signal is streamlining communication operations so that communicators and marketers aren’t bouncing between environments like intranets, Workplace by Facebook, and Slack, but rather have a single source of truth from which they can curate, create, and push content to all the platforms used by different teams, including mobile applications,” Dynamic Signal CMO Joelle Kaufman told VentureBeat. “Dynamic Signal also offers robust measurement and reporting functions, allowing communication professionals to measure their impact.”

Dynamic Signal had raised around $70 million prior to now, with Microsoft Ventures leading its previous series D round back in 2016. With another $36.5 million in the bank, the company said it plans to expand the platform’s functionality, develop deeper integrations with third-party enterprise apps, and pursue an “aggressive” hiring plan for its offices in Silicon Valley, Chicago, Seattle, New York, and London. The company said it expects to double its headcount in 2018.

“Employees are an organization’s most valued asset, and communication with them is mission critical,” added Dynamic Signal cofounder and CEO Russ Fradin. “But in today’s enterprise, communication is broken. Technology has changed the way we consume information. The rapid adoption we’ve experienced is evidence that organizations recognize how significantly employee expectations for communication have radically outpaced enterprise communication practices.”

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