New Zealand startup expanding its Providence office

Loomio is expanding its office at Social Enterprise Greenhouse’s hub in Davol Square one year after it opened.
Loomio is expanding its office at Social Enterprise Greenhouse’s hub in Davol Square one year after it opened.

PROVIDENCE – Loomio, a New Zealand company whose mission is to help groups make better and faster decisions, is expanding its office here at Social Enterprise Greenhouse’s hub in Davol Square one year after it opened.
“It’s great being in a coworking space with other entrepreneurs,” M.J. Kaplan, Loomio’s lead for U.S. growth, said recently.
Kaplan said she is the lone Providence employee now, but there are plans to add another employee this summer.
The company’s software development is based in New Zealand, while the Providence office – its first in the U.S. – primarily handles sales and customer support. Kaplan’s job also is to promote growth in the U.S. and globally.
Kaplan, who teaches social enterprise at Brown University, joined the company in 2014, after visiting New Zealand a year earlier through a Fulbright fellowship to research social enterprise. She did a case study on Loomio during the fellowship and was impressed with it, so when company officials asked her to work with them after she returned to Providence, she agreed.
“I was excited to shape a high-potential startup,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan said Loomio’s platform is used in business, government and nonprofits and operates in 100 countries. She said it’s been translated into 33 languages.
The company raised $460,000 from investors based in South Korea, the U.S., New Zealand and Canada, with the investment round led by Sopoong Ventures, a Seoul, South Korea-based social venture fund. Kaplan said the company wanted to protect its social mission so it engaged in a mechanism called “redeemable preference shares” – through that mechanism, a fair return to investors is provided while the company’s social mission is protected.

She noted that there are a growing number of apps designed to make work more effective, but Loomio’s tool is unique in that it is designed to “make teams work more effectively across time and space” in an online environment.
“We find that teams already working together can work much more effectively” using Loomio, she explained. “There are all sorts of advantages. The power dynamic is more functional in an online environment. It helps with productivity.”
She said there’s an additional benefit from an inclusion standpoint, as teams do not always include all the stakeholders because it’s not practical from a cost standpoint.
“This is a way a team can bring in other voices,” Kaplan said.
She said Loomio users say decisions made are more thoughtful because they are in writing, and the final decision is clear, as there is a “paper trail” leading up to it. There is no confusion as to what the final decision or outcome was – something that can happen in a group meeting, Kaplan said.
“Our groups tell us the quality of decision-making is better in an online environment,” Kaplan said.

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