Why Initialized Invested In WorkRamp & The Future of Employee Training
Work is changing a lot these days, and great software remains at the heart of that. Around the Initialized offices, we often talk about how easy it is for someone to share a photo with a friend with great consumer software, but nearly impossible for very simple things to happen at work.
Today, we’re announcing that we’ve invested in WorkRamp, a graduate of the most recent Y Combinator batch, that is re-imagining how companies train their workers.
Imagine for a moment: A room full of 100 people looking at PowerPoint slides together. The dull videoconference where half the people have the browser minimized. The long-winded email that managers spend days agonizing over, but most folks skimmed briefly and archived immediately. Incredibly, the best option for folks who wanted to train their organizations was to use MailChimp to send the email and check the open rates!
Enter WorkRamp. The company has built a knowledge management tool that lets employers easily create training guides. These are living documents that are actively pushed to large teams, with sections that train people through tasks, tests and videos. These guides can be revised over time into a master plan that folks use for new employee onboarding, rolling out a new sales plan, or even for engineering teams to share the best security practices.
Managers can get real feedback about whether the guides are useful, and if their teams actually retain the knowledge presented. For instance, a salesperson can shadow calls with senior sales people and get certified in their skill pitching people, using video, all inside of WorkRamp. Once a whole team has been through the training, the VP of Sales can easily see who’s up to speed and who might need some extra coaching.
We love that WorkRamp guides are the obvious replacement for the dumb out-of-date wiki, a painful all-hands, and the boring videoconference. Their smart learning management software is already helping companies like Square empower more small business owners, and Off Grid Electric bring electricity to more homes in Africa.
WorkRamp’s CEO Ted Blosser previously led teams at Box and Cisco, and his cofounder Arshdeep Mand was Director of Engineering at YC-funded SpoonRocket. It’s a winning combination: product/engineering founders who can sell.
Here’s what Ted had to say about why they started WorkRamp this year:
“My first company failed and I promised myself that I would go learn from the best before taking another shot at starting my next one. I spent almost 5 years at Box, learning and doing everything I could — from sales, to product management and go-to-market. I was able to work with top leaders like Aaron Levie and see first-hand what you needed to do to make your company successful. Right before my fifth anniversary, I felt the market opportunity was right and my skill set was developed enough to make the leap again. Building a company is a long journey (especially in enterprise SaaS), but there hasn’t been a day so far where I’ve regretted the timing of my decision!”
We’re very excited to be investors in this startup with great co-investors and friends like Leo Polovets at Susa Ventures, Semil Shah at Haystack, Wei Guo at Wei Fund, Mike Ma and Mike Miller at Liquid 2, and super-angel Elad Gil.
WorkRamp is available now at workramp.com.
Looking forward to share more from our portfolio both here on Medium and over at our homepage, initialized.com.
