The funding came from a group of investors led by Arthur Ventures, and including High Alpha Capital and Varenne Partners.

The company will use the funding to reinvest in product and accelerate hiring. TINYpulse has proven to be integral in boosting happiness and reducing turnover. A recent study by Deloitte found that use of TINYpulse correlated with a turnover reduction of 50 percent at one company.

TINYpulse ended 2015 cash flow break-even after adding large enterprise clients, plus hundreds of other small and medium organizations looking for ways to improve retention, recognition, and results. TINYpulse counts more than 500 companies worldwide as clients.

Using TINYpulse, leaders get a powerful suite of tools that allow them to improve retention and engagement. In addition to anonymous pulse surveys, TINYpulse offers peer-to-peer recognition, anonymous messaging, and engagement data analysis, among other features.

Arthur Ventures founding partner Doug Burgum has experience in the HR-tech space, serving as chairman at SuccessFactors, a cloud-based HCM solution for talent management.

'We found out about TINYpulse through a portfolio company of ours that was a customer. From my experience running companies, I know that having happy employees leads to improved retention, happier customers, and higher profitability,' said Burgum. 'As the labor market turns toward workers, there's going to be an even more urgent need for leaders to engage with their employees, so there's a tremendous upside for the TINYpulse solutions.'

At the end of 2014, TINYpulse raised $3.5 million in a seed round, which CEO David Niu said is 'still in the bank.' Niu wanted to pursue this Series A round in order to work with Burgum.

'We couldn't pass up the opportunity to partner with Arthur Ventures and Doug Burgum, who founded and created an awesome culture at Great Plains Software,' Niu said. 'For sure, his involvement will allow TINYpulse to grow, and with it our unique and vibrant company culture.'

The funding will also help support TINYpulse launch a potential new initiative in 2016.

'Just like we disrupted the annual employee survey, many of our customers have asked us to help them reinvent performance reviews,' Niu said.

Paul Kim, president at Ratio, a longtime TINYpulse client, said that TINYpulse has helped the company improve retention, recognition, and results.

'TINYpulse is now embedded in our culture and has become the source for values-based decision making,' Kim said. 'It's now a key agenda item that we discuss at our leadership team meetings. By measuring, we were able to boost our company happiness score from 6.1 to over 8 within the period of a year.'

About David Niu: A Seattle-based serial entrepreneur, David was cofounder of BuddyTV and Net Conversions. He's also the author of 'Careercation: Trading Briefcase for Suitcase to Find Entrepreneurial Happiness.' He founded TINYpulse in 2012.

About Doug Burgum: A tech entrepreneur and philanthropist, Doug is chairman of the board and an investor in Atlassian, serves on the board of Avalara and Intelligent InSites, and is the founding partner at Arthur Ventures. He was a founding investor and executive at Great Plains Software, which Microsoft acquired in 2000.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151210005267/en/