Crew raises $15M in Round B led by Greylock Partners

Crew, a communication app for mobile workers, has raised $15 million in Series B round led by John Lilly at Greylock Partners. The company also made public the previously unannounced $8 million Series A round led by Matt Huang at Sequoia Capital, bringing the total financing to $24.9 million. Other investors in both the rounds include Harrison Metal, and Aspect Ventures. Both Huang and Lilly, along with Michael Dearing from Harrison Metal are joining the Board of Directors. Crew is specifically targeted at workers who are always mobile, for example, store clerks, restaurant managers, pharmacists, nurses, baristas, coaches, police and fire personnel. The San Francisco based company, which was founded in 2015 had been working in stealth mode till now. Despite that it claims that the app is already being used by more than 10,000 active organizations. Besides the usual messaging — sent and read — services, the app has features to post shifts, time-off requests, one-tap reactions, and tasks completed. “When teams have the ability to quickly communicate with each other from their mobile devices, this creates new opportunities for a smoother operation and ultimately better customer service,” said Danny Leffel, Co-founder and CEO of Crew.

“Open and clear communications helps everyone have a successful day at work. Over the last year and thanks to extensive input from our customers, we have refined Crew to deliver a highly useful service that leaders can count on to keep their teams up-to-date throughout the work day.”

What more does Crew have?

• Group and 1:1 conversations
• Team directory to connect with co-workers without exchanging phone numbers
• Leaders can use Announcements to share important updates with the team.
• Location Groups show who is at work so one can communicate only with co-workers who are on site.
• Instant reactions like ‘thanks’ to ‘mic drop’
• Schedules and Shift Covers: Weekly schedule can be uploaded or created with the app. Management of shift covers, pick-ups and time off requests, all with manager approvals are available inside the app. Hours worked and wages earned can be tracked from within Crew; and of course one can schedule a shift reminder
• Task Assignment and Tracking: Tasks can be assigned to individuals team members or groups. The status of work and completion too can be tracked easily with Notifications.
• Team Recognition: The app allows leaders and co-workers to recognize great work by awarding a Gold Star to a specific team member

“Enabling teams to communicate in near real-time requires a highly reliable and trusted service that is tailored to adapt to the way different types of businesses work,” said Broc Miramontes, Co-founder and CTO of Crew.

“Keeping teams on the same page means that it’s critical that everyone on the team can use Crew from whatever device they have, which challenges us to design for the broadest set of devices possible.”

“Messaging is a behavior that is already connecting most teams — via some mix of SMS groups, social platforms and more — but these approaches are ad hoc and not optimal for work communication because they are difficult to manage, blend personal and work lives, and are very clunky. Crew combines the power of mobile messaging with intuitive and simple UI to become a single place for team communications, scheduling and tasks,” said John Lilly, partner at Greylock and Crew Board Member. “As soon as I met Danny, Broc and the team at Crew, I immediately saw the potential in this idea and knew this was a team and a technology I wanted to back.” Crew is free as of now and is available both on iOS and Android and can be accessed in a web browser too.