The all-in-one platform that treats employee retention as something you can measure, not just hope for.
THE MARK. HelloTeam's wordmark, set against the company's own paper stock. From a Boston loft in 2016 - first as BetterSkills - to a retention platform backed by a payroll billionaire.
Companies rarely lose an employee on the day the resignation letter lands. They lose them months earlier, in the quiet gaps between annual reviews, when good work goes unnoticed and small frustrations compound. HelloTeam, a Boston HR-technology company founded in 2016, built its business around closing those gaps.
The product is an all-in-one platform for performance management and employee engagement. In one place it packs performance reviews, goals and OKRs, recognition and rewards, employee surveys, a learning library, a live organizational chart, and people analytics. The pitch, printed plainly on its own site: "Streamline Performance. Engage Employees. One Simple Platform."
Behind it is Tanya Bakalov, a former Deloitte consultant and Bulgarian immigrant who had already helped scale one company - the digital-infrastructure firm SevOne - to more than 500 employees and nearly $100 million in annual revenue. That experience taught her that the hardest part of growth is not selling; it is keeping the people who do the work. She launched the company as BetterSkills, rebranded it as HelloTeam in 2018, and has been building toward a single idea since: that retention is a system a company can manage with data, rather than a matter of luck.
In 2023 that idea drew an unusual backer. Tom Golisano, the billionaire founder of payroll giant Paychex, led a $10 million Series A through his firm Grand Oaks Capital, supplying $7 million of the round himself. It was a bet, as Forbes framed it, on a startup taking aim at the roughly trillion-dollar cost of employee turnover.
"The all-in-one employee engagement and performance management platform for the modern workforce."
Most HR teams stitch together separate tools for reviews, goals, praise, and surveys. HelloTeam's argument is that the data is more useful when it lives together.
Customizable manager, self, and 360 reviews, one-on-ones, and cascading goals and OKRs that link a company's targets down to the individual.
Peer and manager praise, reward points, badges, and milestones - the low-cost signals that make people feel seen.
Built-in and custom culture and engagement surveys with sentiment tracking, so leaders can read the room over time.
A self-updating chart that visualizes more than 1,000 employees from live data - the map of how work actually flows.
A central social hub for announcements, internal communications, and everyday company culture.
People analytics that connect performance and engagement data into organizational-health insights.
A learning module with customizable courses and training tracking to grow skills in-platform.
Connects with HR systems and distributes through the ADP Workforce Now and Microsoft marketplaces.
Review-site scores, on a 5-point scale. HelloTeam consistently rates high for usability - customers say it is the rare HR tool employees actually open.
Sources: G2 and Capterra public ratings; G2 Employee Engagement index rankings. Figures approximate and change over time.
Disengagement and turnover are expensive and often invisible until it's too late. HelloTeam's answer is to make engagement measurable in real time - pairing performance data with recognition, surveys, and sentiment so managers can act before a good employee is already halfway out the door.
Mid-market and enterprise employers across real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, education, professional services, and nonprofits - organizations with dispersed or hybrid teams that need one system for the whole employee experience.
Rivals such as Lattice, 15Five, Leapsome, and Reflektive often specialize in one slice of the stack. HelloTeam's differentiator is breadth - bundling performance and engagement in one platform, joined by a live org chart and analytics, at a price and simplicity aimed squarely at the mid-market.
HelloTeam runs a straightforward B2B SaaS model: organizations subscribe to the platform, typically on a per-employee basis, and the software becomes the connective tissue for their people programs. Revenue is estimated in the low single-digit millions, consistent with a team of roughly 33.
Distribution runs through two channels: a direct sales team, and partner marketplaces. Listings on ADP Workforce Now and the Microsoft commercial marketplace let HelloTeam ride existing HR and productivity ecosystems, so a customer's employee data can flow in without manual copy-and-paste. That partner-led motion is a common playbook for mid-market HR tools competing against far larger incumbents.
Tanya Bakalov launches the company to give leaders data-driven people insights - the same year she wins EY Entrepreneur of the Year.
The company takes the HelloTeam name and announces $2.7M in seed funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Osage, VT Technology Ventures, and angels.
HelloTeam earns 14 G2 badges in the Fall 2022 rankings, with top-five finishes across employee-engagement categories.
Grand Oaks Capital, the firm of Paychex founder Tom Golisano, leads a $10M round to scale the platform against the retention crisis.
Tanya Bakalov is named to Inc.'s 2025 Female Founders 500 list.
"Empowering every employee to be connected, engaged, and inspired."
It's an all-in-one HR platform combining performance reviews, goals and OKRs, recognition and rewards, surveys, learning, a dynamic org chart, and people analytics - all aimed at improving employee engagement and retention.
Tanya Bakalov founded it in 2016, originally as BetterSkills. The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
About $16.2M total, including a $2.7M seed round and a $10M Series A in 2023 led by Grand Oaks Capital, the firm of Paychex founder Tom Golisano.
It competes with performance and engagement platforms such as Lattice, 15Five, Leapsome, and Reflektive.
Mid-market and enterprise employers across real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, education, and nonprofits, including Pella, Massage Envy, Girl Scouts, and the University of Delaware.