People Analytics company Culture Amp, which counts Airbnb, Uber, Pandora, Adobe, Pinterest and Warby Parker among the companies using its platform, today announced that it has closed $6.3 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures and Blackbird Ventures. Culture Amp will use these funds to accelerate expansion of its platform that provides real-time data and insights into company culture through customizable and specialized surveys. As part of the investment, Felicis Ventures managing director Wesley Chan, founder of Google Analytics, will join the Culture Amp board.

'Culture Amp has swiftly become indispensable to heads of talent and CEOs, because for the first time they can understand in real time what makes their people tick,' said Aydin Senkut, founder and managing director at Felicis Ventures. 'We are excited to back them because there is nothing more important than retaining and motivating key talent at every successful company now.'

Second only to finding and hiring the right employees, retention has been one of the biggest challenges for startups and established companies alike, with the costs associated with low-employee engagement running as high as $550 billion a year.

'Culture Amp's platform has grown to date through word-of-mouth,' said Culture Amp co-founder and CEO Didier Elzinga. 'With this investment, we want to accelerate development of our technology, and expand our marketing and sales efforts, so we can continue to provide the most insightful platform available for company culture and people analytics.'

To find out what keeps employees engaged and motivated, Culture Amp uses its know-how in psychology, statistics and user experience in its platform to create data-driven human resources insights. Recent Culture Amp data reveals that 69 percent of employees are motivated to go 'above and beyond' in their work role. However, among the top five percent of companies that perform highest across all key drivers and engagement indicators, that rises to more than 90 percent of employees.

The funding comes on the heels of Culture Amp's second Benchmark report, which sets the industry standard for companies to track their progress on cultural metrics against competitors. The company plans to release a number of reports this year, which will investigate links between employee data and other business metrics, as well as reports on gender, tenure, innovation drivers and age diversity across industries.

About Culture Amp:

Culture Amp is a culture-first software company that is building the world's leading survey and analytics platform for people and culture. The Culture Amp team combines deep knowledge in psychology, statistics, user experience and engineering into a platform that is transforming organizations worldwide. Founded in 2011 by Didier Elzinga, Doug English, Jon Williams and Rod Hamilton, it has offices in San Francisco and Melbourne. For more information, visit www.cultureamp.com or follow on Twitter at @cultureamp.