Autograph

Autograph is an ode to operators, built by people who understand HR deeply

Autograph is backed by VCs & angels who were early investors of AngelList, Docker, Front, HelloSign, Instacart, DraftKings, Pillpack, Checkr, Human Interest, BetterUp, Mercury, Amplitude, and many more iconic companies.

We're a team of people who understand People Ops & Biz Ops deeper than almost anyone. We've restructured organizations and compensation for Fortune 500 companies at BCG. We built HR, finance, and legal workflows at AbstractOps, and managed the back office for 200+ companies (including early stage startups like On Deck, Maven, Airplane, Primer).

And now with Autograph, we are now bringing this expertise to solving the problem of scattered HR data and automating rote work at companies with 250 - 5,000 people.

Why we're building Autograph

Life is too short for bad software. If that seems like a silly statement, it helps to remember that post-pandemic, the average knowledge worker probably spends more time in business software than actually interacting with colleagues.

There's been a dramatic upgrade in the software available to many teams: modern enterprise tools for engineers, product managers, sales ops, customer success, and more recently finance teams have been getting a big facelift. But HR software today is really bad. While it's easy to think of it as a small part of a company (and often an overlooked one), the effects of this trickle down to every aspect of how a company operates. Execs can't make effective planning decisions. Managers can't understand the context for their team properly. And every employee — ever so slightly — feels more like a statistic.

We think this is — in big part — the fault of the systems used to manage people & talent. We think we can do way, way better. And we want to do this by balancing the nuanced individual and holistic whole, by balancing both visibility and control.

Let's take it up a notch. If we can even just bring HR software into the 21st century, a great platform could create a magical work experience for every person at a company. And most importantly — it allows companies to make faster, better decisions; build more aligned teams; and reward and retain their best people, creating a vortex of talent density where people are excited to show up and build every day. This is why helping companies manage talent better is intrinsically and objectively valuable.

We think we can build a people management platform that could change how work is done:

• API-first, providing operators with better tools to spend less time joining CSV exports in spreadsheets and more time drawing and acting on insight
• UI-first, delightful to use, built with taste and care, and requiring a zero-implementation experience
• AI-first in due time, because properly structured data can produce important, even surprising results

(Yes, sorry, that sort of rhymes on purpose.)

We think, when done right, a People Operations team can be empowered to serve as a partner to the business and drive it forward. We are ushering in the era of superhuman People Ops.