HiBob: A Fast-Growing New Leader In The HCM Market

The HCM market is an $11 billion market, filled with HR and payroll platforms for companies of all sizes. The well-known leaders (Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, ADP, UKG, dayforce) are filled with execs who have known the space for years. And thanks to their time in the market, these companies have thousands of customers so they understand the complex needs of HR departments, managers, and payroll teams around the world.

Yet despite the legacy nature of the market, disruption is taking place. Companies are frustrated with the usability of these systems, their lack of flexibility, and the fragile nature of their architectural limitations. In most cases, when you set up an HR system you make lots of decisions about the job hierarchy, job levels, pay grades, and org structure. And once you’ve made these decisions, they’re very hard to change. This means that over time, the system gets harder to use, so companies layer dozens of talent management tools on top.

These systems are also hard for employees to use. Initially developed for HR itself, most now have mobile interfaces and portals for managers and employees. And thanks to agentic AI, most are building chat front ends. Despite this, the level of complexity is hard to disguise, so many companies “hide” the HCM from employees and build complex portals on top. Witness the massive growth of ServiceNow, which has popularized the idea of an employee experience layer that protects employees from the HCM confusion.

About a decade ago (2017), I met Ronni Zehavi, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and the then-new CEO of HiBob. His vision was to build a “People Management” system that was designed not for the back office, but instead for managers and employees. The initial idea, which we talked about extensively, was to build “The Instagram of HR” – something that was so elegant and beautiful that anyone could immediately see value.

I warned Ronni that the problem was more complicated than it seemed. He heard me but pushed ahead, building the HCM platform Bob with a modern, elegant, engaging interface that brought his vision of “HCM for everyone” to life.

Unlike many of the HCM products I see, Bob’s use-cases started with employees and managers. So from the very start, the system was designed to help leaders manage their teams, with easy-to-use tools for profile creation, calendars, group employee recognition, org charts, communication, and alerts. And the user experience, which remains just as exciting today, was fun, easy to understand, and written in common business language.

(HiBob is rated 4.5 in G2 by the way, an exceptional rating for enterprise software.)

While the front end looked “easy,” the system had enterprise features from the start. While Initially HiBob sold it to smaller tech companies, they quickly realized that their initial core market was bigger, encompassing almost every fast-growing company in a people-centric industry.

These are companies like VaynerMedia and Fiverr who are doing a lot of hiring, have a strong focus on culture and engagement, and have HR teams that are spread thin. Bob is exceptionally good at compensation management, analytics, DEI, and performance management, things all companies need but few want to buy as a specialized product in each area.

(We at The Josh Bersin Company implemented the Bob HCM platform a few years ago and essentially configured it in a weekend.)

As the company’s business grew, so did the demands for features. So in 2023 and 2024, HiBob introduced Bob Hiring, its ATS (applicant tracking system), Bob Learning, its LMS, and UK Payroll, which offers a modern approach to a legacy payroll operations. Through the strategic acquisition of Pento earlier this year (Ronni’s team is a tech powerhouse), HiBob acquired the technology to deliver a flexible approach to payroll and plans to offer US payroll in 2026.

And along the way, HiBob maintained its focus on “the consumerization of enterprise software,” standing out as one of the few SaaS companies that have successfully cracked the code on user experience. As a user, I have to say it is not only feature-rich, but genuinely enjoyable to use.

Let me talk about mission. Most HCM vendors start with the focus on employees, but quickly get dragged into the arcane needs of HR. Even ADP, the largest HCM vendor in the world (measured by the number of customers), has had to force itself to build easier and easier to use front-ends over time. HiBob, as you can see, continues to believe that Bob is a “business growth platform” not a system to “manage HR” or “deliver actionable HR data to leaders.” (Rippling thinks this way as well.)

This has led HiBob to rapid growth and what I would call a “Disruptor” status. Other disruptors exist, including Rippling and Lattice in the US, Darwinbox in Asia, and the Payroll providers (Paychex, Paycor, Paylocity, Gusto, etc.) each of which has been building HCM platforms.

And of course, we have to mention ADP, which remains disruptive and innovative in its own way. ADP’s Lyric HCM, which is built on a highly adaptive architecture, embraces some of the most advanced flexibility in the market, but it’s targeted to larger distributed businesses.

Every vendor in this space is smart, innovative, and passionate. UKG introduced an entire agentic AI platform, has a new CEO, and is focused on making hourly employers a best-place-to-work. Workday continues to innovate, injecting AI into its platform and partnering with industry-focused consultants. And SAP SuccessFactors has introduced the most advanced AI system I’ve seen at this point (Joule), integrating all the SAP apps.

Despite all this innovation, HiBob continues to grow. Last year the company grew 40% and now has more than 4,200 customers and 1,100 employees. And as the company scales the product and sales team, it now sees an opportunity to be “The HCM Platform You Always Wanted.” In other words, they’re going after fast-growing mid-sized companies where Workday and other legacy Enterprise solutions are too complex to cost-justify.

HiBob calls this the “Modern Enterprise,” and that positioning makes sense. Workday was the “first to the cloud” in the mid-2000s and staked out the position as the “modern system” for that generation of technology. HiBob would argue that its highly flexible platform, fast time-to-value, and Instagram-like UI give it the potential to win the “next generation of fast-growing companies,” built on the architecture of today.

(And the AI features coming are impressive: hiring email generator, smart-course generator, competency library generator, job catalog builder, survey builder, and manager and employee self-service tools.)

While all this makes sense, and very few HCM vendors are growing at 40% per year, so I think the story comes down to execution. Rippling is an amazing innovator and sports one of the most aggressive sales teams I’ve experienced (I get calls from them regularly). ADP is an innovator on all fronts: payroll services, data and benchmarking, AI interfaces, and a range of underlying platforms which will eventually be based on Lyric HCM. Workday is partnering with integrators and repackaging its system for smaller companies. And vendors like UKG and dayforce are doubling down on advanced features to attract this market.

In the case of HiBob, I think there’s something about the energy, passion, and fast-paced engineering culture that’s working. Ronni continues to lead the organization, and he has the unique strengths of savvy business leadership, deep technology experience, and humility to learn all the time. I think this is a company well worth watching, and with any market as dynamic as this one, HiBob’s success will drive others to move even faster.

Additional Information

HR Technology 2025: The AI Trailblazers

What Is Workday Illuminate?

SuccessFactors Leapfrogs HCM Capabilities: AI, Skills, Talent Intelligence, And More

Try Galileo, the AI-Powered Expert Assistant for Everything HR