Workvivo – Another Intranet by Alexander Gornyi

The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.

‘The main thing about startups is the question and not the answer’ is a popular approach for many in the venture world. In other words, anybody can develop a social media, but only Zuckerberg realized that people want to talk online with their offline acquaintances.

A ‘comfortable intranet’ is a well-known question. Millions of companies and hundreds of millions of white collar workers are using various solutions, but are not happy with them in most cases. The employer wants to involve the employee with ‘the common cause’ more actively. The employer wants more bonuses. An internal corporate website is the best place for both, but all the existing products are ‘not exactly the thing.’

This has been known for about fifteen years, no less. Yammer got sold for one billion in 2021, the mentioned Zuckerberg launched his Workplace in 2015, but no satisfaction still. The golden standard on intranet didn’t appear anywhere in the world, the clients are ready to pay, but there is no good offer.

Workvivo, the Irish startup of the day, is another attempt at answering the well-known question. To my taste – it’s just like Yammer, the new features are not very substantial, they may have even appeared in the original since I took a look at it last. Nevertheless – Workvivo does sell to somebody, the investors have seen the traction, the startup brought in a round of EUR 21M recently, this is by far not the last intranet startup.

Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov