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Venture Capital News: Keas Raises $8M

2013-06-25
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Market leader in corporate health and wellness, today announced new funding from Ignition Partners and Atlas Venture.
Keas (www.keas.com), the market leader in corporate health and wellness, today announced new funding, customers, partnerships, and additions to its executive team. The news caps a year of record growth for the company.

Keas has raised $8M in funding from Ignition Partners and Atlas Venture. Driven by a skyrocketing demand for corporate health and wellness programs, enterprise compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and adoption of the 360/365 platform, the number of Keas registered users and enterprise clients has more than doubled in the last year. Today Keas adds Pandora, Valeant Pharmaceuticals and KLA-Tencor to its client roster, joining enterprise clients including Pfizer, BAE Systems, Inc. and Living Social.

"Keas is accelerating the adoption of Human Capital Management (HCM) applications that are consumerized, gamified, and mobile. It is driving record employee engagement for America's largest enterprises, and as a result, driving up employee productivity. This is the key to sustaining growth," said Jeff Fagnan, Partner at Atlas Venture and Keas board member.

HCM applications like Keas are at the forefront of helping corporations realize two of the largest opportunities for value-creation: improving employee productivity and managing healthcare cost growth. Together, these opportunities represent $500 billion per year opportunity that can be reclaimed and leveraged through higher employee engagement, morale, and collaboration.

"Keas brings a truly social, collaborative aspect to health and wellness at BAE Systems," said Cynthia Donohoe, Vice President of Benefits at BAE Systems, Inc. "The fun, mobile platform makes it easy for employees to engage by providing and empowering them with the tools and peer support they need to create sustainable and healthy behaviors."

The Keas 360/365 platform delivers sustained employee engagement by having the largest library of health and wellness content, the largest online health and wellness community, and the most entertaining challenges and competitions for achieving both individual, team, and company-wide health and wellness goals.

Keas is the only health and wellness offering that is integrated and holistic, incorporating personal nutrition, fitness, and health information into one unified profile and one multi-platform application. The Keas 360/365 Platform brings open APIs to the health and wellness market and, has added over ten partners this quarter. Integrated with best-in-class consumer health and wellness applications and partners, Keas is offering employees access to their personalized health and wellness content in one easy-to-use, multi-platform application. New partnerships include:

Fitbit - Fitbit's wireless fitness trackers will integrate activity data into the Keas platform to help employees stay motivated and meet their fitness goals. Keas users will see their Fitbit stats every time they log into the Keas interface.
RunKeeper - RunKeeper is a mobile app activity tracker that makes workouts fun, social, and easy to understand. Activity data will integrate into the Keas platform where users can track and improve the quality of their workouts and physical fitness.
GAIN Fitness - GAIN Fitness customizes workout plans based on an individual's body, goals, and lifestyle. Keas users can access a variety of workouts through the "Healthy Breaks" section including videos custom designed for in-office exercise.
meQuilibrium - meQuilibrium is an interactive coaching system designed to help people treat stress. The system is built upon years of clinical research and will give the Keas community powerful tools to manage stress.
LabCorp - LabCorp provides leading-edge medical laboratory tests, biometrics and health assessment services. By partnering with LabCorp, Keas customers and users will have the ability to measure and track specific health indicators and integrate the information into individual plans to improve overall wellness, as well as within corporate Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) plans.

Keas' momentum and enterprise adoption has led to the expansion of the Keas leadership team this quarter. Laura Tullman joined Keas as VP of Marketing where she will be responsible for capturing market share and continuing on with her proven track record of success in data driven decision-making. Tullman joins from Hilton Worldwide where, as VP of Global Digital Analytics, she built and led a data driven culture to achieve double digit overall online revenue growth. Prior to Hilton Worldwide, Tullman spent over 20 years at IAC and Time Warner, leading teams in brand strategy, product marketing, demand generation, and business analysis. Marty Funk, VP of Sales, also joined the Keas leadership team and is directly responsible for driving the company's revenue growth and fostering widespread adoption of the Keas 360/365 platform. Funk joins Keas from Informatica where he led all of corporate sales for the Americas, growing revenue 150 percent during his tenure. Prior to Informatica, Funk spent 20 years of building successful enterprise software sales teams at SuccessFactors, Iron Mountain, and Exodus Communications.

"Keas is in a unique position to help Americans live longer, get healthy and spend more time with their loved ones," said Josh Stevens, CEO of Keas. "As obesity hits an all time high and rapidly evolves in its severity, and as enterprises ramp up to comply with the ACA in 2014, the need for wellness that works has never been more crucial. Fun, social and mobile works -- we see it in the record levels of platform adoption and employee engagement from our own customers. The time for preventive care is now and an engaging, holistic approach to reducing risk factors is how we will lower healthcare costs and increase productivity in the lives of the million and more we're on a mission to cover."

About Keas
Keas is the most engaging wellness program in the workplace. Keas promotes healthy behavior and teamwork with an interactive application platform that delivers relevant, personalized content to hundreds of thousands of employees. Keas has a proven track record of supporting corporate HR in increasing retention, productivity, teamwork, collaboration and competitiveness. By rewarding people for achieving simple exercise and nutrition goals, employee health is improved and overall healthcare costs are decreased. Founded in 2008 by Adam Bosworth, Keas is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information or a demo, visit www.keas.com. Follow Keas on Twitter at @Keas and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/keas
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