About

Cornerstone was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Cornerstone powers the future-ready workforce with adaptive HR software designed to unite people, teams, technology, and business to inspire a work environment of growth, agility, and success for all. With an AI-powered and skills-forward system designed for the contemporary workforce, Cornerstone helps organizations modernize their learning and development experience, deliver the most relevant content from anywhere, accelerate talent and career mobility and establish skills as the universal language of growth and success across their business.

Insight & Approach

Vector has been intimately familiar with Cornerstone’s business and market for many years, primarily through our investment in Saba Software where Cornerstone was a competitor. After first providing a credit investment to Saba in 2013 and then taking the company private in 2015, Vector significantly increased revenue and EBITDA through organic growth and transformative acquisitions before ultimately selling Saba to Cornerstone in 2020 and Phil Saunders (previously Saba’s CEO and former Vector operating executive) became Cornerstone’s CEO. Through the successful Saba investment, Vector developed deep expertise in the talent management sector and developed a perspective that Cornerstone was underappreciated in the public market following a year of strong operational performance but weak share price performance after the Saba acquisition. In October 2021, Vector partnered with Clearlake Capital to take the company private.

Vector Value Add

Given Vector’s experience in the talent management software market, Vector is providing valuable strategic perspectives and guidance through its two board seats at Cornerstone. Vector is also actively collaborating with Clearlake and Cornerstone management to identify and execute add-on M&A investments. Finally, Vector’s Value Creation team is helping Cornerstone’s team with operational initiatives including go-to-market strategy development and the continuous integration of Saba.