Why All Of Us At Contentsquare Are Celebrating Our $500 M Series E Funding Round
Milestones come in all shapes and sizes
Raising money is great, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. What matters, of course, is the why and the what. Why you raised it, and what you’re going to do with it. For us, that means our vision — the vision we have for what tomorrow’s digital world could look like, and our role in helping to build it. And that vision has never been stronger, because we are passionate about what we do, and committed to always doing better.
This latest news is a loud and clear message to the whole team that the hard work but also the discovery, innovation and determination are being recognized. That it takes a special bunch of people to take a college assignment and turn it into a global market leader.
There is a current of opinion that downplays funding announcements, as the health of a company is measured in growth, not headlines. And there is truth to that. But here at Contentsquare, it’s not just the funding rounds we celebrate. We celebrate everything. Really.
We celebrate birthdays, product launches, work anniversaries, existing clients, new clients, client news (yes, you could say we are client-obsessed) and $500M funding rounds with the same enthusiasm. We celebrate being with each other (during our all-company annual WorldWide KickOff), and if we can’t physically be with each other, then we celebrate remotely.
In essence, we celebrate every time we write a new part of the Contentsquare adventure — whether it’s a small sentence or an entire chapter. The reason we do that is because for us, it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. We love what we do, we mark the achievements and we stick together through the tough times, as we did this past year. Covid hit us hard, too, but we were able to come through the last twelve months with no furloughs or Covid-related dismissals, and the pandemic didn’t make a dent in our culture.
An adventure owned and shaped by our employees
One thing we believe in at Contentsquare is that everyone on the team gets to shape the adventure. Everyone is vital at Contentsquare, and everyone has a unique piece to bring to the story. We all contribute to the success of the company together, and we all get to make a difference.
As such, every full time employee owns a bit of the company, and as of January 1st 2020, everyone who joins Contentsquare gets stock options. But for us, ownership is much more than just stock options — going back to the early days of the company, we’ve worked on creating an organizational model where everyone can contribute ideas and help deliver on the vision.
We value transparency over organizational charts. Ideas over hierarchy. And our customers above all else. And that’s also why we celebrate. Because everyone of the 800+ people who work for Contentsquare today helped us raise the funding that will accelerate our innovation, elevate our AI, and support our growth the world over.
We have five core values at Contentsquare — all of which were picked by the team a few years back. One of those values is Enthusiasm, and this is what it means to us: ‘celebrate successes, share good news, be positive.’ As you can see, recognizing our hard work, great ideas and accomplishments is something we put at the heart of our company culture, right from the start.
There’s never been a better time to join the team
There really has never been a better time to join Contentsquare. One of the things this funding allows us to do is grow our team, the CSquad, and to share this incredible adventure with more people. We aim to recruit 1,500 new team members globally over the next three years, including hundreds of positions in Product and R&D. We’ve grown so fast these past few years and we’re not about to slow down. Our investors, clients and partners have confidence in our vision, and so do we.
In fact, this past year has put the spotlight on customer experience and shown exactly what we can help our customers achieve. It’s a great thing to be developing a technology that makes such a huge difference, not just to the businesses who partner with us, but to their customers too. We’re helping to shape what digital will look like tomorrow, and we’re doing that with all the enthusiasm, creativity, passion and drive that we’ve had from the very beginning.
We take all this trust very seriously, and we know that with power comes responsibility. In fact, one the reason we want to create one of the biggest companies in the world is because we have big ambitions for the impact we want to have. Whether it’s making the web accessible through the work of the Contentsquare Foundation, supporting early-stage startups that also want to change the world through our Atomic Labs by Contentsquare incubator, or raising the standards for digital privacy — there are so many ways to make change happen at Contentsquare.
It’s not just digital experience we’re revolutionizing. Our goal is to create the best ever people experience. That’s why we’re always investing in our CSquad: in the team’s career growth, in learning & development opportunities, and in strengthening the unique, values-led culture each and every one of us helps build every day.
So that is why we celebrate. And we’re not done celebrating quite yet… Stay tuned.
Photography by Chris Buck
