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Team TINYpulse volunteering at the Salvation Army.

TINYpulse’s mission has been the same since day one: Help improve employee morale at companies worldwide. Now the Seattle-based startup is receiving a nice chunk of funding to do so.

David Niu.
David Niu.

TINYpulse today announced a $3.5 million Series A round led by Baseline Ventures, with participation from Harrison Metal and other investors.

The 22-person company will use the fresh funds to accelerate product development, hiring, and further its mission to give leaders a pulse on how happy, burnt out and frustrated their employees are.

“Most of these investments were already in process prior to the investment,” said founder and CEO David Niu. “The funding just allows us to scale even more aggressively and confidently.”

TINYpulse sells its product to companies who use the service to ask their employees one anonymous question a week, like, “How happy are you at work?” or, “If you had to describe your company as an animal, what animal would it be and why?”

TINYpulse analyzes the responses and then provides information that helps administrators gauge the happiness levels of people at work. In addition to the continuous feedback loops, employees can also give “Cheers for Peers” to colleagues that deserve appreciation. Bosses have the ability to send back all this information to employees so they know their opinion matters.

HappinessHistogram (1)

Niu, who previously co-founded BuddyTV and Net Conversions. had been bootstrapping the company. He’s now taking investment after realizing what opportunities lie ahead for TINYpulse.

“It was only recently when we realized that so many organizations were willing to invest in and get a pulse on their people and culture that we had a compelling opportunity to grow even faster to fulfill our mission,” Niu said.

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TINYpulse serves an array of customers, from tech companies like HubSpot to places like the EMP Museum or Kent School District. The idea is to easily gauge employee morale so CEOs and managers can better invest their time.

“By making it so easy to collect insights and trends, the managers are able to focus their energy on engaging the team for solutions and positive change,” Niu explained. “Positive dialogue then naturally sprouts from issues brought up via TINYpulse like company policies, benefits, and reiteration of company culture and mission.”

Niu started TINYpulse in 2012 after going on a “careercation” with this family around the world. Along the way, he met with several entrepreneurs — a wine maker in Auckland; a fruit trader in Shanghai; a financial consultant in Seoul — in hopes of finding out the best practices and pain points when it came to people management, culture and leadership. That experience inspired Liu create TINYpulse and he later wrote a free book that detailed all the lessons from his trip.

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