Kris Duggan

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Kris Duggan
Born (1974-07-10) July 10, 1974 (age 49)
Sydney, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Alma mater University of California, Irvine
Occupation(s)Investor, entrepreneur
Years active1999-present
Known forBetterWorks and Badgeville
Website krisduggan.com

Kris Duggan (born July 10, 1974) is an Australian-born entrepreneur, advisor, investor, who co-founded and was the founding CEO of Badgeville and BetterWorks.

Contents

Life and education

Kris Duggan was born in Sydney, and grew up in Houston, Texas and then Southern California. He graduated with an MBA in Information Technology from University of California, Irvine. He moved to Silicon Valley in 1999 and resides in Palo Alto with his wife and two sons.

Career

From 2003 until 2006, Duggan held senior sales management positions with WebEx prior to its acquisition by Cisco for $3.2 billion. [1] The company is currently known as Cisco WebEx, and provides a host of virtual, on-demand collaboration software including web conferencing and videoconferencing.

From 2009 until 2013, Duggan was an advisor to Palantir Technologies, assisting with go-to-market strategy and execution. He developed the company in a number of ways, including expansion into the federal government. [2]

Kris Duggan co-founded Badgeville in 2010. [3] Badgeville designs game-based programs for companies to encourage social interaction and track analytics. [4] [5] During his three-year tenure as CEO, the company raised $40M in capital, including $25M in a third round of funding from InterWest Partners. [6]

In 2013, Duggan co-founded BetterWorks, a Silicon Valley-based company that provides a cloud-based continuous performance management platform for enterprise companies. [7] BetterWorks layers on top of existing management software to track goals and progress made towards those goals. [7] BetterWorks is funded by Kleiner Perkins (board member John Doerr) and Emergence Capital (board member Jason Green) and has raised $40M in capital. [7] [8] In 2015, Duggan created the BetterWorks performance tracker smartphone app for the Apple watch. [9] [10] During Duggan’s tenure, BetterWorks raised $15.5M from a group of investors in 2014 [11] and another $20M in Series B funding in 2016. [12] Duggan and the company made national news in 2015 for switching from typical annual reviews and pay raises to other incentives. [13] [14] Duggan resigned as CEO of BetterWorks in July 2017 following allegations of sexual misconduct and battery by an ex-employee. As of February 2018, Duggan was an active board member.

Prior to Badgeville and BetterWorks, Duggan co-founded Medsphere, a government open-source medical platform, and OzNetwork, an Internet media company. [15]

Kris Duggan is an advisory chair to the Alchemist Accelerator, an organization which facilitates enterprise startups and advises new entrepreneurs. He was also an adjunct faculty member for Singularity University. [16]

On July 11, 2017, Beatrice Kim, a former employee of BetterWorks, filed a civil lawsuit in Superior Court in San Francisco against the company, Duggan, and two other employees accusing them of sexual harassment and discrimination. [17] [18] [19] Kim's accusations against Duggan in particular included battery and assault. [17] Duggan denied the allegations. He resigned his position as CEO of BetterWorks on July 26, 2017. [20] The lawsuit was settled for around $1 million. [21] [22] The claims of sexual misconduct and the controversy surrounding them led to the delayed publication of a book co-written by Duggan; it was later published without his name. [23]

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References

  1. ↑ "Cisco Buys WebEx for $32 billion". Tech Crunch.
  2. ↑ "The quantified Serf". The Economist. 5 March 2015.
  3. ↑ Bryant, Adam (9 March 2013). "Getting Stuff Done: It's a Goal, and a Rating System". New York Times.
  4. ↑ Singer, Natasha (4 February 2012). "Employers and Brands Use Gaming to Gauge Engagement". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  5. ↑ Siegler, MG (27 September 2010). "Badgeville Wants To Layer Social Gaming (And Yes, Badges) Across The Entire Web". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  6. ↑ Chapman, Lizette (30 May 2012). "Badgeville Raises $25M Series C at $100M+ Valuation". WSJ. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 Konrad, Alex (23 September 2014). "BetterWorks Raises $15.5 Million To Bring Google-Style Management To Small Companies". Forbes. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  8. ↑ Lunden, Ingrid (23 March 2016). "BetterWorks raises another $20M to build a 'business operating system' for enterprises". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  9. ↑ Metz, Cade. "A Smartwatch App That Lets Your Boss Track You Constantly". Wired.
  10. ↑ "Smartwatch app lets bosses track their employee's work goals in realtime". 30 April 2015.
  11. ↑ "Business Goals Platform BetterWorks Leaves Stealth With $15.5M Led By KPCB". TechCrunch.
  12. ↑ "BetterWorks raises another $20M to build a 'business operating system' for enterprises".
  13. ↑ Silverman, Rachel Emma (23 August 2016). "Companies Rethink Annual Pay Raises". The Wall Street Journal.
  14. ↑ "Goodbye annual review, see ya performance ratings". CNN. 25 September 2015.
  15. ↑ Swallow, Erica (23 January 2012). "How Badgeville Is Gamifying the Internet". NBC News. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  16. ↑ "6 fresh ways to motivate the Millennials at your company". The American Genius. 18 December 2014. Marti Trewe.
  17. 1 2 "BetterWorks and CEO sued by ex-employee for alleged sexually suggestive assault". TechCrunch. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  18. ↑ "BetterWorks faces new sex harassment suit as it settles first one, picks new CEO". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  19. ↑ "BetterWorks CEO Hit With Latest Silicon Valley Sexual Harassment Suit". Fortune. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  20. ↑ Peterson, Becky. "BetterWorks CEO to step down following accusations of assault, sexual harassment". Business Insider. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  21. ↑ "Harassment suit puts book by John Doerr, BetterWorks CEO on hold". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  22. ↑ Lizette, Chapman (16 March 2021). "Here's What Happens to a Startup After a Sexual Harassment Scandal".
  23. ↑ Schubarth, Cromwell. "John Doerr's playbook: What the legendary VC learned as an intern at Intel, and how that helped Google and others excel". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
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