The operating system for the person your engagement actually depends on - the manager.
Most workplace software is built for the two ends of a company: the executive who wants a dashboard, and the individual who wants a to-do list. Leadr, a company headquartered in Addison, Texas, made a different bet. It built its product for the person in between - the manager - on the theory that roughly 70 percent of an employee's engagement is decided by whoever they report to.
That focus shapes everything. Leadr is a continuous-performance platform: it pulls the recurring 1-on-1 meeting, goal setting, feedback, engagement surveys and the annual review into a single system, then adds artificial-intelligence tools to summarize conversations and flag coaching moments a manager might have missed. The company describes it less as a review tool and more as an operating system a manager opens every week.
The premise, which the founders repeat often, inverts a common assumption: development drives performance, not the other way around. Instead of grading people once a year and hoping the number improves, Leadr's design assumes that steady, structured conversations - documented, tied to goals, revisited - are what actually change how a team performs.
It is a crowded idea. Performance and engagement software is a category with well-funded incumbents. But Leadr's wedge is narrow on purpose. Where many platforms sell HR leaders a way to measure the organization, Leadr sells managers a way to run their week. That distinction, more than any single feature, is what the company is betting its future on.
"Leadership is a burden, and that burden is a privilege."
Matt Tresidder, Co-Founder & CEOLeadr's origin traces back to Pushpay, the church-and-nonprofit payments company that grew into a unicorn. Two of its people - Matt Tresidder and Chris Heaslip - left to start something new. Tresidder had joined Pushpay in 2013 as one of its first U.S. salespeople and rose to lead a sales force of more than 130. Heaslip was a Pushpay co-founder.
The pitch, as Tresidder tells it, arrived while he was traveling the world with his wife: a call from Heaslip about building continuous-performance software with a single, countable mission - develop one million leaders. Tresidder came on as Chief Revenue Officer in 2019 and was named CEO in early 2021. Heaslip serves as Executive Chairman, and Garrett Campbell as COO.
The Pushpay lineage matters because it explains Leadr's instincts. The team came from a company that scaled hard while trying to stay healthy internally, and that tension - growth on one side, organizational health on the other - is the exact problem Leadr now sells software to manage.
It also explains the customer mix. Leadr's roster is unusually eclectic for enterprise software, spanning businesses, hospitals, nonprofits, churches and the occasional professional sports team. Leadership, the company argues, is the same problem wearing different uniforms.
The 70% argument
Leadr's product thesis rests on a widely-cited finding that a large majority of employee engagement is driven by the direct manager. If the manager is the lever, the reasoning goes, then the software should sit in the manager's hands - not only in HR's reporting suite.
Leadr bundles the recurring rituals of managing people into a single continuous-performance platform, then layers AI on top to reduce the busywork.
Agendas and templates for 1-on-1 and team meetings, with AI notes, action items and coaching signals surfaced afterward.
Automatically captures notes, action items and sentiment from conversations, and flags coaching gaps for the manager.
Cascading goals from executives down to individuals, with real-time progress everyone can see.
Continuous peer and manager feedback connected to personalized development plans.
Pulse surveys that track engagement and organizational health over time, not just once a year.
Reviews that auto-populate from meetings, goals and feedback, plus a 9-box matrix for succession planning.
On-platform manager training delivered as short, repeatable habits rather than a one-off seminar.
An AI coaching agent that helps leaders prepare for and navigate people conversations in the moment.
Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius and The Advantage embedded directly into the platform.
The performance and engagement market is not empty. Leadr competes for attention with names like 15Five, Lattice, Culture Amp, BetterUp and Leapsome - platforms that often lead with engagement analytics for HR teams or structured performance cycles.
Leadr's differentiation is one of orientation. Rather than positioning as the system of record for human resources, it positions as the daily tool for the individual manager. Its distinguishing move is the Patrick Lencioni partnership: through The Table Group, Leadr embedded the Working Genius assessment and The Advantage framework into the product, so a bestselling organizational-health methodology lives where the work actually happens rather than fading two weeks after an offsite.
Whether a manager-first strategy wins in a category shaped by HR buyers is an open question. But it gives Leadr a clear identity: the thing a manager opens on Monday, not the dashboard an executive reviews once a quarter.
Bar length approximates how far each tool leans toward the front-line manager as its primary user, based on public positioning. Directional only.
Leadr runs a straightforward B2B SaaS model: annual, per-employee subscriptions sold to organizations, typically those with ten or more employees, priced by seat. Growth comes from recurring revenue plus expansion as customers add users and modules.
The customer list reads like a cross-section of American organizations. Named users have included the flooring giant Mohawk, Health Care Logistics, Refined Technologies, Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, the Santa Barbara Zoo, Mazzella and the Dallas Cowboys. Churches, consulting firms and educational institutions round it out. The company cites tens of thousands of people leaders on the platform.
Around the core product, Leadr has built a content engine: the weekly LeadrPulse podcast, launched in 2024, and Leadr Academy for manager training. It's a content-led approach to a market where the buyer and the user are often trying to learn the job at the same time they're doing it.
Matt Tresidder, Chris Heaslip and Garrett Campbell start Leadr in Redmond, Washington to build continuous-performance software.
The company moves its headquarters to the Dallas-area metro and expands the platform with goals and feedback.
Tresidder is promoted from CRO to CEO, and Leadr raises a $10M Series A led by Bedrock.
Leadr is named to Dallas Morning News Best Places to Work and adds reviews and 9-box succession tools.
Leadr partners with The Table Group, embeds Working Genius, and launches Leadr Academy plus AI meeting tools.
The company launches an AI coaching agent, starts the LeadrPulse podcast, and repositions as a continuous-performance operating system.
Leadr makes continuous-performance software that helps managers develop their teams, combining 1-on-1 meetings, goal setting, feedback, engagement surveys, reviews and AI meeting tools in one platform.
Leadr was founded in 2019 by Matt Tresidder (CEO), Chris Heaslip (Executive Chairman) and Garrett Campbell (COO), several of whom previously worked at the church-tech company Pushpay.
Leadr raised a $10M Series A led by Bedrock in July 2021, with total reported funding of roughly $14.66M across its rounds.
Businesses, hospitals, nonprofits, churches, consulting firms and educational institutions with ten or more employees - including named customers such as Mohawk, the Dallas Cowboys and the Santa Barbara Zoo.
Leadr focuses on the manager as its primary user - daily coaching and meeting tools rather than HR-centric engagement dashboards - and embeds Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius through its Table Group partnership.
Product demos are available on request through leadr.com/book. Video links above lead to publicly posted interviews and podcast episodes.