Milan, October 2, 2024 – Lifeed, an edtech company that has been revolutionizing the workplace since 2015 by highlighting soft skills from every aspect of people’s lives, has successfully completed a bridge investment round, initiated in 2023, for a total of €3.5 million. The investment was subscribed by the Startup Relaunch Fund, managed by CDP Venture Capital SGR S.p.A, Opes Italia Sicaf Euveca, SEFEA Impact SGR, and Hungarian firm Impact Ventures, already an investor in Lifeed.
The investment round will both strengthen Lifeed’s offering through the use of generative AI and support its expansion into high-potential international markets through partnerships with leading human transformation companies. Additionally, Lifeed aims to consolidate its presence in the Italian market, where it already has over 100 corporate clients and 70,000 users.
To support this new phase in the company’s growth, Salvatore Pugliese, former CEO of Brown Editore S.p.A and TF Group S.p.A, joins the board as CEO. He will bring significant managerial expertise and lead a new phase of growth, heavily focused on technological innovation, consolidating the Italian market, and international development.
Riccarda Zezza, who co-founded the company and led it for its first 9 years, securing investments both in Italy and abroad, and earning recognition as one of the world’s most innovative and inclusive practices for skills development in the Ashoka and McKinsey & Company study “The Skilling Challenge,” takes on the role of Chief Science Officer. Her focus will be on expanding the company’s scientific impact and defining its research and development strategy, with an increasing emphasis on data and artificial intelligence.
Thanks to its Life Based Learning methodology, Lifeed offers organizations a digital development platform that measures and maximizes human potential throughout the organization. By valuing all of their life skills, companies improve performance, increase retention, and enhance employee engagement. The platform’s algorithms enable a personalized experience for each user, structured in three phases: discovery, activation, and measurement. The mobile-first platform uses AI to create an immersive learning journey with a high completion rate (over 90%), ensuring HR teams can quantitatively measure the results achieved in human potential development, useful for certifications and ESG reports.
“This bridge investment round positions Lifeed for an ambitious growth plan, fully embraced by our partners, and will allow us to enter 2025 by opening new markets, some of which have already been identified, such as Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, while others are yet to be determined. I chose to take on this challenge because I believe that in an increasingly ‘AI-centric’ world, frantically focused on automating processes and operations, there are human capabilities that will never be replaced: empathy, creativity, critical thinking, for example. My goal is to work with Riccarda Zezza and a highly valuable team to offer the market a revolutionary platform capable of measuring talents’ potential, giving AI its rightful role as a co-pilot, not the absolute pilot,” stated Salvatore Pugliese, CEO of Lifeed.
“I am very proud of this milestone, and I know that Salvatore Pugliese’s leadership will bring Lifeed into a new phase of growth: it is a ‘generational handover,’ from founders to a qualified top management team, which only the most fortunate startups can afford when aiming for the scaleup phase—an achievement less than 5% of startups reach*, so we have reason to celebrate. We are fully focused on human development: the ‘soft’ part, which seems harder to impact, but ultimately influences everything else. We do this by revolutionizing education: a learning experience that adapts to people’s lives, turning them into a continuous training ground for soft skills. This method breaks the stereotypes that limit the abilities of so-called ‘minorities,’ doubling productivity, engagement, and leadership of women, youth, aging workers, parents, caregivers, and returners,” concluded Riccarda Zezza, Founder of Lifeed.
The investment round and development plan come 10 years after the publication of “Maam, Maternity as a Master,” the book written by Riccarda Zezza, which laid the foundations of Lifeed’s model, launching the entrepreneurial adventure and market innovation of the author, who is now further renewing it with the potential offered by AI.
People are increasingly disconnected from work and don’t feel well in their company. Only one in five employees feels engaged today.
This disconnect impacts all generations, especially the younger ones, and is destined to widen the Talent shortage phenomenon: a lack of talent that is expected to reach 85 million people globally by 2030.
Moreover, the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will lead to greater diversification of the skills required in the job market.
To reconnect people to work, traditional training is not enough. Companies need to look at people from 360 degrees, enhancing all the dimensions of their private and professional life.
Only in this way organizations can see and unlock everyone’s full potential, thus improving retention, growth and productivity of their collaborators.
But what is potential and where is it? These are transversal skills – or soft skills – that represent the skills of the future according to World Economic Forum and are developed above all outside of work.
To encourage talent retention and development, companies are called upon to build a long-term strategy on multiple levels. Lifeed’s research identified three key areas of intervention:
The data from the Work-Life Observatory, based on the 2023 Survey which involved 1,219 participants in Lifeed learning paths, demonstrate that valuing people in their entirety allows for a concrete impact on all these areas.
This Impact Report presents the data collected from Lifeed’s 2023 Survey which analyzed the responses of participants to its learning and development paths. The skills trained by people in their private and professional life transitions emerged.
The analysis of the results demonstrates the effectiveness of Life Based Learning, the method created by Lifeed that allows people to transfer their soft skills from private life to work and vice versa.
The pandemic has revolutionised people’s idea of work-life balance. Today, 81% of workers see their professional career as just a part of a full and satisfactory life (ManpowerGroup, The New Human Age: 2023 Workforce Trends).
Workers of all ages and genders are looking for companies that can actively recognise and support the importance of a healthier work-life balance.
In a scenario characterised by global trends such as Quiet quitting, Great resignation, mental health issues and low work engagement, companies can take on an active role in caring for their employees so as to attract and retain talent, fostering the sustainability of the company itself. And the data collected by Lifeed proves it.
In order to attract, retain and develop talent, companies must focus on four main areas:
This report presents the data collected by Lifeed’s 2022 Survey, which analysed the answers of 1,125 participants in its learning paths. The survey revealed the skills and talent developed by people during their life transitions: becoming parents or caregivers, or going through a period of significant change like facing the consequences of the pandemic and changing jobs.
The analysis of the results proves the effectiveness of Life Based Learning, the method devised by Lifeed that enables people to transfer their soft skills and talent from their personal to professional lives and vice versa.
