Most performance management platforms focus on automating existing processes such as digitizing manager reviews, streamlining goal setting, or adding engagement surveys. Confirm takes a fundamentally different approach by addressing what CEO David Murray calls “the core reason why performance reviews should exist”: identifying who actually creates value within organizations.
After experiencing the dysfunction of traditional talent management firsthand, Murray founded Confirm to solve what he describes as a billion-dollar problem — companies making poor talent decisions based on incomplete data. The result is an ONA (Organizational Network Analysis)-driven AI talent platform that reveals hidden performers and problematic employees that traditional reviews consistently miss.
Overview of the Confirm Solution
Confirm positions itself as the first ONA-driven AI talent platform purpose-built to identify and act upon hidden talent problems. The platform combines four core areas:
- Talent surprise identification through ONA
- Traditional performance management tools (goal setting, one-on-ones, calibration)
- Team optimization features (OKRs, team alignment, leveling frameworks)
- Culture measurement tools (engagement surveys, continuous feedback)
The company serves mid-market to enterprise organizations, and they’ve experienced over 220% year-over-year growth in the enterprise segment for three consecutive years.
Unique Value Proposition
Confirm’s fundamental insight challenges the traditional bell curve distribution of performance ratings. While most organizations rate employees on a scale where the majority fall in the middle (“meets expectations”), research on knowledge work suggests talent follows a power law distribution — a small percentage of employees create disproportionate impact while another small percentage creates most problems.
Through their data, Confirm has found that 15% of employees create 50% of positive impact, while 5% create about 50% of organizational problems. The surprising finding: when they identify these high and low performers through network analysis is that many are not on the radar of top leaders.
Murray illustrates this with a real client example: a 1,000-person organization that promoted two people who had to be managed out days later because “people came out of the woodwork saying this person was toxic.” Meanwhile, valuable contributors left the organization, with colleagues later saying they couldn’t believe management let those people go.
Key Features and Capabilities
Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)
Confirm’s core differentiator lies in their ONA methodology, which asks four key questions quarterly:
- Who do you go to for help and advice, and about what?
- Who energizes or motivates you?
- Who do you believe is an outstanding contributor (pick only three)?
- Who are you concerned about and who needs additional support or attention?
Responses require 200-character explanations (about the length of a text message) and skill/behavior tagging to prevent gaming the system and build a crowdsourced talent inventory.
AI-Powered Performance Reviews
Confirm offers two AI integrations that address the time-consuming nature of performance reviews:
- Accomplishment capture: Instead of spending hours writing paragraphs about achievements, employees can import structured data from tools like JIRA and Asana. AI then generates impact descriptions and tags relevant skills and behaviors.
- Manager review generation: Managers can provide prompts about employee performance, and AI writes complete reviews using all available data — ONA feedback, self-reflections, accomplishments and continuous feedback
Traditional Performance Management Tools
Beyond their unique ONA approach, Confirm includes standard performance management features: goal setting, one-on-ones, calibration workflows, promotion packets with approvals, nine-box exercises, and talent matrices for succession planning. The platform supports 10+ languages and integrates with Slack and Teams for continuous feedback and recognition.
Innovation
Confirm’s approach to identifying talent differs significantly from traditional peer 360 reviews, where people select who provides feedback about them. Confirm’s open-ended questions don’t gatekeep responses, leading to more honest assessment. Murray notes that 90% of negative feedback in their system comes from people who wouldn’t be selected in a traditional peer 360 process.
Structured Accomplishment Tracking
Rather than asking employees to write lengthy accomplishment narratives that disappear after reviews, Confirm captures achievements as structured data throughout the year, creating a permanent “trophy case” that reduces recency bias and preserves institutional knowledge.
Data-Driven Differentiation
When managers receive ONA data before providing ratings, the traditional bell curve distribution transforms dramatically. Organizations see significantly more five-out-of-five ratings and more one-and-two ratings, indicating genuine performance differentiation rather than forced ranking through calibration discussions.
Benefits for Potential Clients
Confirm’s network analysis reveals quiet contributors who create significant value but don’t manage up effectively. These “self-sacrificers” often enhance team performance while often not receiving high ratings from managers. The platform also identifies problematic employees who are skilled at managing up but create issues for their teams.
Reducing Manager Bias
Brandon Hall Group™ research shows that most managers are not strong talent evaluators and ratings reflects those weaknesses or idiosyncrasies more than employee performance. By providing network data, Confirm helps managers make more informed decisions based on broader organizational perspective.
Streamlining Review Processes
The AI capabilities dramatically reduce time investment in performance reviews. Managers report that for every 15 minutes employees spend writing accomplishments, they typically spend only seven seconds reading them. Confirm’s structured approach and AI generation make the process more efficient for everyone involved.
CEO-Level Engagement
Unlike traditional performance management systems that CEOs rarely use, Murray reports that CEOs log into Confirm five, six, or seven times daily during performance cycles because the platform captures data they actually trust.
Market Context: Competitive Landscape
The performance management space presents interesting dynamics around market segmentation and feature focus. Confirm positions itself against enterprise-level solutions rather than the smaller-company tools that dominate much of the market conversation.
Legacy Enterprise Solutions
Confirm most commonly competes against traditional platforms like SAP SuccessFactors, ADP Workforce Now, and Workday. Cornerstone also offers a strong enterprise-level system. However, Murray said the relationship is sometimes complementary rather than competitive. For example, half of Confirm’s enterprise customers use Workday as their core HRIS while layering Confirm on top for advanced performance management capabilities.
BetterWorks occasionally appears in competitive situations, representing one of the newer players that can handle enterprise scale, though it lacks Confirm’s network analysis capabilities. Solutions like Lattice and 15Five are prominent in the small-to-medium business market, but Confirm doesn’t consider them direct competitors due to their enterprise focus.
Limited Network Analysis Competition
The organizational network analysis space remains relatively uncrowded. Murray mentioned only one other startup, Performica, that attempts similar network-driven performance reviews.
The AI Performance Review Gap
Despite widespread discussion about AI bias concerns in recruiting, Murray describes AI adoption for performance reviews as a “no-brainer” because it addresses constant complaints about the time-consuming nature of traditional reviews while managers are already using ChatGPT informally, just without access to relevant employee data.
What Makes Confirm Stand Out
Confirm’s primary advantage lies in addressing problems rather than simply automating existing processes. The network analysis approach provides data that traditional manager reviews and peer 360s consistently miss, while their AI implementation focuses on practical time-saving rather than replacing human judgment.
The company’s focus on “rightly recognizing everyone for the difference they make at work” addresses fundamental fairness issues in talent management. By revealing quiet contributors and hidden problems, organizations can make better decisions about compensation, promotion and development.
The platform’s ability to engage senior leadership represents another significant advantage. When CEOs actively use performance management systems, it signals that the data has genuine strategic value rather than serving purely administrative functions.
Development Areas
The company faces the classic challenge of relying to some degree on “rebel CHROs” ready to disrupt traditional processes while overcoming resistance from risk-averse leadership teams. Murray identified getting CEO and leadership buy-in as their biggest selling challenge, despite strong interest from HR leaders.
The complexity of network analysis and the cultural shift required to trust crowd-sourced performance data may create adoption challenges in more traditional organizations, even when leadership supports the change conceptually.
Who Should Consider Confirm
Confirm is best suited for mid-market to enterprise organizations where traditional performance management has demonstrably failed to identify talent effectively. Companies that have experienced the problem Murray describes — promoting people who later need to be managed out, or losing valuable contributors who weren’t properly evaluated and recognized — represent ideal candidates, and there are plenty of them.
Organizations with “willing to challenge traditional approaches will find the most success, particularly if they can secure leadership support for a more data-driven approach to talent decisions. The platform works especially well for companies that value transparency and are comfortable with the cultural shift toward crowd-sourced performance insights.
Teams struggling with remote or hybrid work challenges may particularly benefit from network analysis, since traditional manager observation becomes more difficult when employees aren’t physically present. The platform’s ability to identify quiet contributors who might be overlooked in distributed work environments addresses a growing challenge for many organizations.
Companies already using enterprise HRIS systems like Workday, SAP, or ADP but dissatisfied with their performance management capabilities represent strong prospects, since Confirm can integrate with existing infrastructure rather than requiring complete system replacement.
Confirm succeeds by focusing on the fundamental question of who creates value within organizations — a problem that traditional performance management consistently fails to solve. While this approach requires cultural adaptation and leadership buy-in, it offers the potential to transform talent decisions from subjective calibration exercises into data-driven recognition of genuine contribution.
