SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Almanac, the operating system for remote work, today announced the close of a $34 million Series A financing round led by Tiger Global. Tiger Global is joined by Floodgate Fund, General Catalyst, and 50 leading technology operators, including Joshua Reeves, Ryan Caldbeck, Alex MacCaw, Zack Kanter, Jack Altman, Leore Avidar, and Dennis Crowley.
Demand for Almanac's operating system for remote work skyrocketed this year as COVID-19 forced rapid, widespread adoption of tools designed for remote and distributed teams. According to Stanford research, one-quarter of employees prefer fully remote work post-COVID, and 60% prefer at least some distributed work. And even traditional companies like Ford are developing long-term plans for distributed work.
"Work has changed," says Adam Nathan, Almanac's Chief Executive Officer. "The meeting isn't where decisions that drive the business happen anymore—the document is. If you want to win in this digital, distributed era, you need tooling designed from the ground-up for this reality. Microsoft Office has been a great tool for office-centric companies, but it's not built for a distributed world where the best workers can be anywhere. What we're building at Almanac is not just a better version of core productivity software: it's infrastructure that reflects how management and collaboration should happen in this new era of distributed work. That's why our customers say buying Almanac is a cultural choice, not just a technical one."
This shift to remote work is mainly driven by individual professionals: nobody wakes up to answer emails, respond to Slack messages, and sit in meetings all day long. Burnout and retention data show that companies can't just impose old ways of collaborating onto the new modalities of work. Almanac offers an alternative to office culture defined by constant interruptions and unproductive meetings.
"We're at the beginning of a generational shift in how work gets done," says Mike Maples of Floodgate Fund. "Companies are shifting from office culture to cloud culture where people can work anywhere. Office culture is driven by meetings for managers. Cloud culture is driven by builders who express their thinking clearly and help teams move in a clear direction. The companies that win in the future will embrace cloud culture because the best people will not want to be constrained with yesterday's limitations."
Almanac is an operating system for remote work that combines document editing, version control that keeps teams organized, and asynchronous workflows that make remote collaboration focused and productive.
"Microsoft Office and Google Docs are artifacts of office culture," says Nathan. "In the world of office culture, you're constantly interrupted—churning between Word, email, Slack, meetings, Zoom, and other 'productivity' tools. Compare that to how engineers and designers work using platforms like GitHub and Figma. They can be hyper-productive from anywhere, without the constant distractions of office culture."
The investment will enable Almanac to continue providing best-in-class support and services for its fast-growing customer base, including leading remote companies like IRL and Remote. In addition, Almanac will advance technology and interoperability to deliver the most user-friendly operating system on the market.
"Almanac is at the center of a profound shift in the way organizations and teams collaborate in the remote work era. We know that distributed work isn't going anywhere, but most of today's tooling and digital infrastructure doesn't meet the rapidly accelerating demand led by remote workers. Almanac's vision as an operating system for distributed teams will help organizations create trusted, equitable solutions for the millions of knowledge professionals who now work remotely, and we're excited to partner with a breakthrough leader in the remote work category," says John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global.
For more information on Almanac, visit almanac.io and follow along on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Almanac
Almanac is a technology company that builds collaborative infrastructure for the digital economy. Remote, hybrid, and distributed teams of every size use the company's operating system to create, organize, and collaborate asynchronously across time zones and geographies. Almanac enables organizations to ask for approvals, collect feedback and revisions, and get transparent analytics without needless meetings or messages. Founded in 2019, Almanac is fully distributed, with employees based all over the world.
About Tiger Global Management
Tiger Global Management, LLC is an investment firm that focuses on private and public companies in the global Internet, software, consumer, and payments industries. The Firm's private equity strategy was launched in 2003 and has invested in hundreds of companies across more than 30 countries, in all stages of funding – from Series A to pre-IPO. The venture business aims to partner with dynamic entrepreneurs operating market-leading growth companies; examples include JD.com, Meituan, Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Peloton, Credit Karma, Toast, Stripe, ByteDance, Stone, Warby Parker, Flipkart, Despegar, Ola and DiDi. Tiger Global was founded in 2001 and is based in New York with affiliate offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore and Bangalore.
