Late last month, Rippling, the now five-year-old company founded by serial entrepreneur Parker Conrad, raised $250 million in Series C funding in a round that pushed its valuation to a whopping $6.5 billion.
Now, Conrad is taking the wraps off what had investors so excited about the outfit, which already helps companies manage their employeesâ payroll, benefits, devices and apps, but which is adding an almost astonishing number of features to its existing lineup, beginning today.
Indeed, talking with Conrad earlier this week, there was no doubt about his ambition to build a very big company. He even compared its potential to that of Salesforce. Salesforce âis tying together all of the business systems that you use around this idea of a common customer identity,â he said. Rippling is âmeanwhile saying, âHey, look, thereâs this other way that you need to do this, which is tying all these systems together around a common employee identity and making that the centerpiece of this unified sort of schema across all the different business software youâre using in your business.'â
Itâs bold, considering how much HR software and IT software already exists in the world â some of it created previously by Conrad. Itâs also compelling when viewed as a whole. (We saw the investor presentation.) In fact, all these new features are getting their own overarching branding; they are now part of Ripplingâs âUnityâ platform, which is driven by five separate product units, each with bells and whistles that the deepest-pocketed customers are likely to order as a complete package given that they are more powerful together. (Note that right now, pricing for the whole enchilada â âunlimited Unityâ â is $25 per person per month.)
More here.
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