New Zealand voice-based 360 feedback platform, Huckleberry, has raised NZ$2.1 million ($1.84m) in pre-Seed funding.
The round was led by US VC Oregon Venture Fund, with support from Archangel Ventures, plus US and NZ founders, including Mineral CEO Nathan Christensen, TradeMe’s Rowan Simpson and M-Com’s Serge Van Dam.
Huckleberry enables people to talk rather than taking notes giving feedback to teammates. The artificial intelligence (AI)-augmented platform listens, guides and delivers practical suggestions in minutes, replacing long surveys and other feedback methods to make it feel more like talking to a personal AI executive coach.
The funding will be used to accelerate product development, advance Huckleberry’d AI models, expand the team and growth in its key markets in the United States, Australia and Aotearoa.
Aaron Ward, of Maori descent, previously founded customer experience platform AskNicely, founded Huckleberry earlier this year with Auckland-based Diogo Böhm, the engineering and AI development lead.
Ward, the CEO and now based in Portland, Oregon, where Huckleberry has a second HQ, said that for most people, their career path looks more “like a drunkard’s walk, zig-zagging from one role to another, hoping to stumble into work that fits”.
His new startup takes the lessons from AskNicely using real-time customer feedback to drive recognition for frontline service workers an applies them to HR more broadly.
“Honest feedback can help people discover the work they love, where they can play to their natural strengths. Huckleberry turns that insight into a regular habit, not a once-a-year event,” he said.
“We’re using feedback from colleagues to help professional workers take charge of their career development. It’s a great example of how AI can make work better for people, not the other way around.”
For HR leaders Huckleberry analyses, summarises and delivers insights directly to each employee – saving hundreds of hours of manual work.
Huckleberry’s latest feature, an AI-generated growth plan, helps people act on what they learn by automatically creating a personalised 90-day plan based on the feedback from colleagues.
Ward says that embedding AI into the feedback loop makes it possible for companies to sustain a continuous growth mindset across all their employees.
“We built Huckleberry to make meaningful feedback effortless for everyone,” he said.
“By using voice, we’ve made feedback 10x faster and 100x more human.”
Retirement village operator Oceania Healthcare is an early adopter and Alex Howieson, the GM of People and Culture, is a fan.
“What stands out about Huckleberry is how effortless, constructive and engaging it is – actionable feedback in the moment flows to participants and generates deep team led conversations about performance and delivery,” she said.
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