Confirm, the first platform to inject the science of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) into performance reviews to help people leaders make fairer, faster, and data-driven talent decisions, today announced that it has raised $6.2 million in Series A funding, bringing its total investment to $11.4 million. The round was led by Spero Ventures with participation from SHRMLabs, Elefund, Gaingels, Black Angel Group and several existing customers.

“Performance reviews are broken –– and approaches like continuous feedback and 360 assessments that claim to be the solution are actually making them worse,” said Josh Merrill, co-founder and CEO of Confirm. “Our mission of fixing performance management has never been more relevant, now that remote work and distributed teams are the norm and managers have less oversight into their teams’ work, performance and impact. This investment will power Confirm’s next stage of growth and is critical to ensuring advancement decisions are based on data, not bias.”

Confirm’s platform is powered by an approach called Organizational Network Analysis (ONA), which provides a quantitative view of performance based on every employee’s view of one another. ONA allows companies to measure performance in the way it really happens: through networks. Through ONA, Confirm gives companies, leaders and employees insight into high performers and those that need additional support, allowing organizations to confidently and accurately make promotion, PIP and retention decisions based on clear data –– rather than subjective opinions of managers.

Confirm will use the new funds to fuel product development and boost investment in sales and marketing. In addition to its ONA-powered reviews, Confirm’s platform offers several ChatGPT-4 enabled features, which the new capital will also help further develop, including:

• Auto-drafted employee reviews using input from peers and managers
• Auto-generated employee engagement survey insights
• Auto-calibrated manager ratings for employees to minimize bias in calibration sessions

With Spero Ventures’ investment, Andrew Parker, General Partner, will join Confirm’s board as a director.

“It’s well known that the traditional performance review process is plagued with problems, including bias and inefficiency –– everyone dreads them,” said Parker. “Confirm is dedicated to changing that dynamic, and bringing network-driven decision making to the HR realm, helping to both broaden inputs and automate much of the process. Josh and his team already have great traction in this market and a track record of innovation, and we’re excited to see what’s next.”

This funding announcement comes after a landmark year for Confirm. This week, the company was named as one of the “Top HR Products of 2023” in the Talent Management category by Human Resource Executive®. Confirm was selected as a winner after an extensive evaluation of all submissions by Human Resource Executive®’s editors, as well as outside industry experts and analysts. Winning solutions are selected based on their level of innovation, value added to the HR function, intuitiveness for the user and ability to deliver business value.

In May, the company was honored with a Fast Company 2023 World Changing Ideas Award in the workplace category and recognized with an HR Tech Award from Lighthouse Research & Advisory for Best Talent Intelligence Solution. In March, SHRMLabs selected Confirm as one of five companies from a pool of more than 200 to participate in its 2023 WorkplaceTech Accelerator program, which helps scale and grow startups focused on workplace and future of work technologies.

“This Series A investment coupled with recognition and backing from industry-leading sources like Fast Company and SHRM reinforce the need for our solution to revolutionize the broken performance review process,” said David Murray, co-founder and president of Confirm. “I’m proud of our team and looking forward to this next phase of Confirm’s growth: creating a world where employees are recognized and rewarded for their hard work and positive impact, not their ability to play office politics.”

Confirm’s customers include Canada Goose, Niantic, and Thoropass, the latter of which used Confirm to accurately identify and retain 100% of its top performers during The Great Resignation, saving millions in costs associated with employee turnover.

“Prior to using Confirm, we didn’t have good data and accurate measurement on who is best connected, who are people going to for advice and who needs help,” said Joe Bast, Vice President of People & Operations at Thoropass, a current Confirm customer. “Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) is an absolute breakthrough with performance management; it is exceptionally insightful. By using Confirm, we now know who the influencers are, the high and low performers, who needs help, and what to do to keep the best.”

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