Role of company culture in our very first growth investment round

Today, Sievo announced raising $44 million in growth investment from Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE). The full story can be found here.

At Sievo, we have always put great emphasis on company culture, and it played a significant role in this decision as well. 

When we started looking for an investor to partner with, one of the key aspects in the process was to ensure that they would accept, appreciate and support our company culture.

Looking for investors, but not corporate assholes 

We wanted to be clear about our expectations when we kicked off the process of finding our future partner. Our initial investor briefing document contained the statement "we are not corporate assholes, and we intend to keep it that way".

Through discussions with potential investors, we kept evaluating the culture fit and how working together with them would be. In the end, SGE’s way of communicating and operating, as well as its values and founder-focused approach felt like the right fit for Sievo. 

Radical transparency 

We believe in honesty and transparency, which we practiced throughout the investment round. All Sievonians were able to follow the process, starting from the decision to seek external investment.

We shared frequent updates regarding the process and the initial valuations we received from them. When we were finally able to announce that a deal was reached with SGE it did not come as a big surprise to anyone. 

We’re in this together 

Our community feeling shows in our Harvest Together program. Harvest Together allows all Sievonians to benefit from Sievo’s company value increase.

When the program was created, our goal was to make it accessible to everyone. This means no initial investment was needed.

We also wanted everybody to be able to participate in it equally: Everyone’s contribution matters to what Sievo is worth, so everybody should get a piece of it too.  

With this investment, Harvest Together program yielded its first playouts and Sievonians got rewarded for the hard work they have done in the past years. Our Harvest Together program continues after this investment, growing new fruits to be picked by Sievonians in the future. 

Impacts of the investment  

Going from bootstrapped to externally financed is a big step for Sievo. As we grow together with SGE we aim to keep our transparency, our caring community feeling, and focus on people.  

This investment will enable us to accelerate the growth our offices in Helsinki, Chicago, and Bucharest. This means adding new people to our diverse bunch of procurement nerds and data huggers.

Open positions

If you’re interested in joining a company that cares about its people, strives for inclusion, and shares with radical transparency, you might want to check out our open position at www.sievo.com/careers   

P.S. If you think this blog post is an example of shitty employer branding, we happen to have an employer branding position open - come help us make it better! 😘