hibob is a special investment for the Eight Roads Ventures team, as all of us throughout our professional lives have experienced the pain of using HR systems. Whether requesting holidays or updating details of a pension plan, it's a necessity you go through instead of an experience to enjoy.

When we first met hibob CEO, Ronni Zehavi in London the conversation was about his mission to transform the HR landscape with his product. It wasn’t so much about creating a company as creating a vision of how companies should be run, through the lens of its people.

hibob solves all the major pain points that we face on a daily basis as employees and administrators. First and foremost, it tackles a fundamental lack of usability, creating a software that's a pleasure to use. After all, it doesn’t matter what great features there are, if employees dislike logging on and using a system. hibob has spent a lot of time trying to solve this. It has been built ground up to be employee centric including a Clubs feature to capture interests and hobbies, encouraging team outings and hassle free socialising.

We’ve been astounded - despite the level of focus from senior business leaders on talent - how often HR tools let teams down, failing to directly connect performance with outcomes. So, the second major issue Bob addresses is reliable analytics. These are crucial if management is going to really, quantitively understand how its people work. Talent shortages and retention is one of the biggest issues currently facing companies and this marks a step change as to how companies use data within the HR function, moving it from the back office to the front office.

There are several online HR systems already out there, but currently only a third of SMEs use any HR software in the UK. Moreover, UK auto enrolment regulation will cause ~1.8m SMEs to enter the pensions markets for the first time by the end of this year. In this new environment, automation and an easy to use HR interface become not just nice to have, but business critical. 

We think hibob has the potential to change the way we all do HR and it’s no wonder that it has already attracted such a loyal following. As an investor, one of our biggest joys is bringing together exceptional talent and backing them to create something extraordinary. There continues to be great scope for innovation in HR systems and processes and hibob keeps spotting new problems to solve. We're thrilled to be working alongside Ronni, Israel, Andy and Amit, and our friends at Bessemer, Battery Ventures and Arbor Ventures, to bring forth the next generation of HR services.