Angel → VC
Customer‑centric SMEs
2014
Self‑serve analytics
NPS software
Aaron Ward and John Ballinger founded AskNicely in 2014, quickly winning over small business customers willing to pay for real-time NPS feedback.
Their early traction led to a US$10 million Series A in 2019, fuelling global expansion and a move of headquarters to Portland while keeping product development in Auckland.
Startup Rollercoaster
The Spark
Aaron Ward and John Ballinger founded AskNicely in 2014.
They built early validation via small business customers willing to pay and launched their platform using NPS and other CX metrics to continuously collect feedback.
The Peak
By April 2019, AskNicely had grown to over 1,000 business customers globally, ~50 employees, with offices in Auckland and Portland.
In 2019 they closed a US$10 million Series A funding round led by Nexus, with participation from Blackbird Ventures and K1W1.
The Drop
As the CX (customer experience) software space matured, AskNicely faced growing competition from larger incumbents and needed to differentiate beyond simple feedback collection tools.
Also, scaling to support enterprise customers brought complexity in integrations, analytics, and frontline activation.
The Reset
In January 2022 AskNicely raised US$32 million (NZ$47.2 million) in a Series B round led by Five Elms, with Nexus and Blackbird also participating, to double down on tools for frontline teams and more actionable analytics.
They shifted the product from simple survey delivery toward real-time dashboards, mobile apps, tighter integrations (CRM, ticketing etc.), and motivating individual frontline staff.
The Discipline
AskNicely invested heavily in R&D, especially user experience, analytics, and enabling frontline users to see and act on feedback.
They also built a company culture centred on customer happiness, feedback loops, and recognition of frontline performance.
The Climb
Post-Series B, they’ve expanded global operations, growing offices (e.g. Netherlands), and securing larger enterprise customers.
Their mature product suite and stable recurring revenue have positioned them for sustained growth.
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