Ohos

To be clear, talent management is not just a nice to have for organizations, it is a must have. And because of that, it is also big business. The talent management software market is pegged to be a $11.3 billion industry by 2019 according to Marketsandmarkets.

Two important shifts are occurring that position Ohos well to capitalize in this market. The first is a move to invest in continuous feedback, and the other is to utilize data to make more data driven decisions on employee retention, improvement and promotion.

Put simply, Ohos is making an emerging trend, known as “Continuous Performance” an easy to implement process.

As Josh Bersin, Forbes Contributor and founder of Bersin by Deloitte, says:

“Continuous performance management is possible, it works, and it can transform your company. We are not talking about doing away with ratings, rather we are talking about building a new, ongoing process for goal setting, coaching, evaluation, and feedback.”

In Ohos, we have a company trying to bring 21st century to an age-old problem: the consistent improvement of ones’ employees.

Already we have hints that this thesis might just come to fruition. The least of which is success with the Ohos’ pilot programs where 90% overall faster decision making and 60% better promotion decisions were achieved.

In the old structure of employee feedback a manager would provide feedback on a quarterly basis at most without having the full picture of that individual. The Ohos system enables feedback from all parties involved with an employee, including outsourced vendors and even clients. This way, an organization can get a holistic view of the employee from every angle (top-down, bottom-up, peers, and outside-looking-in observers).

Which is why Ohos’s early growth should come as no surprise. They are quickly growing their user base with 612% growth in customers in 2016 and 2017. Though off of a small base, it speaks to the fact that the company is finding product-market fit with organizations including the likes of Alteryx and Georgia Tech.

The company is currently projecting ~$33 million in revenue from 366k users by FY 2023. Whether or not they can achieve that kind of hockey-stick growth is to-be-determined. However, they have a well designed SaaS tool that is on trend. To date, the company touts a $22 customer acquisition cost for current users, a $324 lifetime value of each user over 3 years, and a 74% gross margin.

With a focused approach to customer acquisition amongst early adopter, innovative org anizations that only account for 6 million organizations in the small and mid-sized company market seems like the right tactic for growth. Being able to acquire 366,000 of these 6 million early adopters does seem within reason, with the type of product-market fit the team is showing.

Sizable revenue growth seems all the more likely as Ohos has begun building out a talent-management database that it can use for any future clients — the type of technology that becomes more and more valuable as time goes on.

The team is also smart to be building a nimble, lightweight solution that the big HR software players like Kenexa and Taleo just can’t compete with. Ohos has already talked about the ability to service the gig economy with their feedback solution. Which if you think about it is brilliant.

Imagine organizations like Uber or Fiverr working with an organization like Ohos to get better feedback loops on their gig economy employees? It could be a huge opportunity that progressively grows down the road.

With a solution that can meet small and mid-size HR business needs, as well as the gig economy’s needs, Ohos may find themselves with many attractive acquisition offers from the bigger players. Check out some of the large acquisitions in this space below.

Provided by Ohos

With a market begging for innovation, acquisition opportunities will continue to present themselves and provide the chance for investors to get sizeable returns and liquidity over a shorter timeline than other industries.

What Kingscrowders need to know

Just imagine a world where the HR departments of tomorrow are constantly providing feedback — in real time. Such a scenario would be the very definition of “talent management.” With few competitors truly finding ways to provide actionable real-time feedback outside of other early stage ventures like Reflektive to employees, Ohos will have a chance to win in this market.

Technology such as that offered by Ohos’ stands to be the next iteration of workplace development. From giving employees the tools to become more effective at their jobs, managers now move to that most rewarding of tasks – helping employees themselves become more efficient. And in doing so, you have an opportunity to make an efficient investment in a reasonably priced $3.5M Ohos seed round.

We think Ohos is a “Top Deal” worth consideration in your investment portfolio.