By Somesh Dash and Jason Kong
Today, IVP is excited to announce our investment in Humu, a behavioral change software company helping people increase productivity (and in turn happiness!) through proprietary technology rooted in science and machine learning. IVP is the lead investor in a $30M Series B round of financing, with Somesh Dash joining the board as a Director. We are thrilled to be partnering with the company founders Laszlo Bock and Wayne Crosby, and existing investor Index Ventures to change how the world works.
Working to Live or Living to Work?
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. The 154 million working adults in the United States spend on average 8.28 hours working each day according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the 128 million Americans classified as working full time (>35 hours weekly), the average rises to 8.81 hours, more than the amount we spend daily on personal care and sleep. Given that we spend more time working than anything else, we all expect that our professional experiences combine purpose, structure, learning, achievement, joy, and fulfillment.
We come into the first day at a new job green with excitement, eager to join together, and take steps towards realizing our organization's inspirational mission. From there, the path forward diverges. Some are taken under the wings of caring and fair managers, given the shelter and nourishment to grow into our best selves while contributing to the team. Others are thrown into a mosh pit of office politics, left to wrestle with the beast of corporate bureaucracy while being nipped at the heels by workplace inequality. For those in the latter camp, many will join the nearly 50% of Americans who see their job as just what they do to earn a living, rather than anything more. We believe that work can be better and Laszlo and Wayne believe it absolutely needs to be better. Unlocking the potential of each of our current and future employment opportunities is the dream that both founders are pursuing relentlessly over the next decade.
The Happiest (Work) Place on Earth
The Disneyland of work sits nestled in Silicon Valley, a campus scattered with rainbow-colored bicycles, nap pods, and gourmet cafeterias. While the credit due to Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Sundar Pichai, and other executives for building Google into the company it is today cannot be understated, Humu co-founder Laszlo Bock was the one to harness Google's chief competitive differentiator: human capital. As Google's first Senior Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo truly transformed the company's culture and even wrote a New York Times Bestseller book called Work Rules that synthesized many of his learnings. During his decade-long tenure at Google, he was instrumental in the company from a 5,000 employee start-up to a 70,000-employee multinational organization synonymous with workplace culture. Through Laszlo's combination of organizational behavioral theory with a data-driven approach, he created the field of People Operations and led Google to be named America's Best Company to Work for six years straight. Wayne Crosby spent a decade at Google as one of the most valuable engineers in the company and received the Great Manager Award in 2012 for his engineering leadership. Jessie Wisdom, PhD, spent a decade leading research projects for Google's People Innovation Lab and People Analytics teams, improving organizational decision-making and driving behavioral change throughout the company. We can't think of anyone more suitable and experienced to make work better for all of us than the team at Humu.
A Job Well Done
Laszlo, Wayne, and Jessie started Humu in May 2017 with a mission to make work better for everyone, everywhere. They are creating a proprietary technology to empower Enterprise leaders to measure what matters (and only what matters) and to leverage people analytics (and a little bit of
) to nudge people towards being their best selves, every day. Today marks the one-year anniversary since Laszlo and Wayne birthed the company. In the past year, Humu has developed a new approach to employee engagement via their platform and gotten a number of large enterprise companies to sign up as customers.
IVP has partnered with some of the fastest growing enterprise companies of all time, including AppDynamics (acquired by Cisco), Dropbox (Nasdaq: DBX), Marketo (acquired by Vista Equity Partners), Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG), Rubrik, and Slack. Humu shares many of the same attributes early in its company's journey that made those companies successful. We believe that work can, and should, be better for everyone and that happier employees work better. We couldn't be more excited to be partnering with the Humu team to bring this vision to reality in the years to come. Happy Birthday!
Somesh Dash is a General Partner at IVP, a later-stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA. Jason Kong is an Associate at IVP.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
By Somesh Dash and Jason Kong
