Zugata raises $7 million to make annual performance reviews obsolete

Even before they began to graduate from college, millennials drove changes at work, from management and recruiting practices to the design of office interiors. Now, a tech startup called Zugata has raised $7 million in Series A venture funding to replace the crusty old performance review with something more motivating to this group than a twice-a-year, managerial write-up. Founded in 2014, Palo Alto-based Zugata developed software as a service that automatically figures out who employees work with most, and then helps them gather feedback from each other, directly, without managers or HR departments eavesdropping. Zugata CEO and cofounder Srinivas Krishnamurti explained that providing employees with a private, but official, means of exchanging feedback decouples professional development and performance goal-setting from salary and promotion decisions. And it’s gaining traction in what amounts to a huge market.” Primarily, the company plans to use the Series A capital for hiring, product development, international expansion, and to help its clients deliver corporate learning to their employees that is perfectly tailored to their needs.