Achievers Raises $24.5 Million in Financing, Led by Sequoia Capital

SAN FRANCISCO and TORONTO, Sept. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Achievers (formerly I Love Rewards), the fastest-growing global employee rewards and Social Recognition company, announced today that it has secured $24.5 million in a Series C financing, led by Sequoia Capital with existing investors, JLA Ventures, GrandBanks Capital and the Ontario Venture Capital Fund (Managed by NorthLeaf Capital).

"We are thrilled to add Sequoia Capital as a business partner," said Razor Suleman, Founder and CEO of Achievers.  "Sequoia shares our belief that great companies are built by great people; people that are focused on customer happiness.  With this round of financing, we will be able to scale our culture, partner with more customers and execute on our mission which is to Change the Way the World Works."

Achievers plans to accelerate its sales and marketing initiatives as well as further develop its award-winning product in order to continue innovating the 100-year-old employee rewards and recognition industry.

FY'2011 Achievers Facts:

• 105% increase in monthly revenue over the last 12 months
• Total funding $38 M
• Headquartered in San Francisco and Toronto

"Employee rewards and recognition is a $48 billion industry that is highly fragmented, largely manual and lacking in the metrics to prove-out the ROI," said Alfred Lin, a Partner at Sequoia Capital and board member at Achievers. "Achievers' customer centric business model and SaaS technology platform is on a path to disrupt this market. We're excited to join Achievers to meet the demands of the modern workplace."  

Achievers provides a multilingual solution with 24/7 support, and through Sequoia's investment, the company will seek to aggressively accelerate market share to realize their vision of becoming the global leader in employee rewards and recognition solutions. The Achievers platform is available to organizations between 500 employees up to Fortune 500 companies looking to enhance employee engagement.

About Achievers:

Achievers (formerly I Love Rewards) is passionate about employee rewards and Social Recognition. Our software helps engage employees and inspire performance globally. Achievers' customers include Deloitte, 3M and Microsoft. Achievers' investors include Sequoia Capital, JLA Ventures, GrandBanks Capital, and the Ontario Venture Capital Fund. The Social Recognition platform provides performance-based recognition and rewards in the form of points that can be redeemed for meaningful rewards including Apple, Visa Reward Cards, and Expedia travel. Check us out on the web www.achievers.com.

About Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital provides venture capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into enduring companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs," Sequoia Capital's Partners have worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of NetApp, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of NVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube, Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Networks, Jonathan Kaplan of Pure Digital, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Omar Hamoui of Admob and Steve Streit of Green Dot. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com/us

SOURCE Achievers