A UK-founded professional development firm focused on sales has secured £16.8 million in funding.
Sales Impact Academy, which is now based in the United States, has a technology platform and live curriculum taught by ‘the world’s elite go-to-market practitioners’ including England Rugby World Cup-winning coach Sir Clive Woodward, now an investor.
Its education and professional development solution covers sales, customer success, marketing, management and operations. It is used by global companies including HubSpot and GitHub.
The investment is led by Boston-based HubSpot Ventures and MIT Investment Management Company, in partnership with existing investors Stage 2 Capital and Emerge Education.
“I have been teaching on the SIA platform for the last 18 months – the live teaching approach, interactivity, and connection you make with the learners creates a world-class online learning experience,” said Sir Clive.
“It’s also been so impressive to see a British company scale so fast in the US and become a major player in the sales education space. So much so, in fact, I became an investor in this round of finance.”
Sales Impact Academy has grown from 25 to 125 employees over the past year, from 82 to over 260 customers, and has seen 500% YoY revenue growth.
The learning community has grown from 3,330 to 14,560 professionals, which it says makes it the largest go-to-market learning community in the world.
The executive board has also seen significant growth with Ryan Scheuermann, previously with Process Street, coming on as CTO, and Tony Jackson, formerly of Tableau, MongoDB, and Snowflake, joining as chief revenue officer recently.
“Half the world’s companies are selling business to business, and the growth engine of those companies is the go-to-market team,” said Paul Fifield, CEO and co-founder.
“It blows my mind every day that, unlike law, finance, or HR, there is no structured learning or education for go-to-market teams, either as a student or an in-work professional. It means everyone is learning as they go, with the education burden falling on the companies themselves, who are simply not natural educators.
“The net result is average internal learning programs and a profession in utter chaos. Given that these teams are responsible for the growth of half the world’s GDP, ensuring they have strong learning and development resources couldn’t be more mission-critical.”
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