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Venture Capital News: Worklete Attracts $6.5M Series A Funding

2018-08-06
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Digital health platform announced a $6.5M Series A led by Trinity Ventures.
Worklete, a digital health platform designed to prevent musculoskeletal injuries (MSIs) among labor intensive workforces, today announced a $6.5M Series A led by Trinity Ventures with participation from Launch Capital, River Park Ventures, Aspect Ventures and Kapor Capital. Other strategic investors include Dave Yarnold and Gokul Rajaram. Karan Mehandru from Trinity Ventures will join the company's board of directors.

Worklete launched commercially at the end of 2015. Clients include multiple large, multinational enterprises, including Nestle Waters and Penske Logistics. Twenty thousand front line employees engaged in physically demanding jobs are actively using the platform today. The company is averaging an 85% pilot-to-customer conversion rate, spurring revenue growth of more than 500 percent over the past 12 months.

In 2017, Workers compensation claims cost US companies $96B in direct costs alone, according to an internal analysis by the company. Sixty-four percent of direct workplace injury costs are incurred by errors in human movement, including overexertion, bodily reaction, and falls, according to Liberty Mutual Group. Worklete's digital health platform reduces these types of preventable workplace injuries by teaching employees how to use their bodies correctly and commit those movements to habit so that, even under physical stress, they default to strong, stable physical positions. Employers typically realize upwards of 50 percent decreases in injuries and resulting claims, leading to triple-digit return on the Worklete investment. Worklete's digital health platform integrates into the complex workflows of their enterprise clients. Savings come from reduced workers compensation claims at work, fewer injury claims outside of work, and lower indirect costs stemming from injuries. Worklete is also well-received by employees: 96 percent of users claim to like or love the platform since it helps them stay healthy and injury-free.

"Since partnering with Worklete, our overexertion and musculoskeletal injuries decreased by over 60% in the first year following implementation. We have been able to sustain this improved performance thanks to consistent messaging, fantastic employee reception and engagement, and our ability to track participation through reporting," said Tim Smith, Vice President of Safety at Hub Group, Inc. "Worklete has been a crucial block in the foundation of our impactful safety culture that improves our team member's lives, both at work and at home. It's even more exciting to see the new developments within the Worklete platform that will help us continue to raise our performance goals and driver engagement."

Worklete was founded by CEO Benjamin Kanner, whose father ran a safety and movement consulting business for three decades. Kanner, a serial technology entrepreneur who also worked for his father as a movement consultant for over ten years, joined forces with Worklete COO and co-founder John Post and medical advisor Kelly Starrett to address worker safety in a cost-effective and scalable way. The company is addressing a need and population segment often underserved by the innovation economy.

"Most people don't know how to move correctly because they've never been taught. Movement matters; when poor movement practices are compounded with hard physical labor, the risk of injury escalates dramatically. Worklete is here to fix that. We aim to become the most reliable, scalable, and enjoyable way to improve employee movement and health," says Worklete founder and CEO Ben Kanner. "Workplace injuries not only impede workplace performance and cost companies billions of dollars. They truly impact people's lives--both at work and at home. We help hard working folks in physically demanding jobs stay healthy and pain free, not just so they can do better work, but also so they can live fuller lives."

"I was inspired by Ben's mission to leverage decades' worth of fine-tuned movement best practices to improve the daily lives of millions of hard working members of our society. It's clear from speaking with people from a wide variety of industries, ranging from nursing to transportation to warehousing, that Worklete's impact is immediate and profound," says Trinity General Partner Karan Mehandru. "The result is greater than 95% engagement from employees on the Worklete platform and millions of dollars saved by employers weeks after deployment. I'm proud to invest in a company that is having such a positive impact on a population that is a huge and integral part of our economy but often neglected by the tech ecosystem."

About Worklete
Worklete is a digital health platform designed to eliminate injuries for the world's largest workforces. Worklete's scalable, enterprise platform teaches employees movement best practices and helps them to commit those practices to habit. Large, multinational employers rely on Worklete to decrease musculoskeletal injury claims by upwards of 50 percent, while their tens of thousands of employees benefit from improved health and safety. Founded by serial entrepreneur Ben Kanner with a family history of human movement consulting, Worklete is backed by top-tier investors Trinity Ventures, Launch Capital, River Park Ventures, and Kapor Capital. Learn more at http://worklete.com/.

About Trinity Ventures
Trinity Ventures is a top-tier venture capital firm combining business insight, practical expertise and a personal touch to help start-ups win big. For over thirty years, Trinity has helped passionate entrepreneurs with breakthrough ideas transform markets and lives. Trinity's investment team takes a collaborative approach and believes in personal engagement, mutual respect and goal alignment to deliver outsized returns to entrepreneurs and investors. The firm invests in early stage technology companies with emphases on Cloud Infrastructure and Core Technologies, Consumer Driven Services, Horizontal Business Applications, Industry Specific Services and Emerging Technologies.
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