Despite an increasing reliance on technology, the workforce has never been more human-centric than ever before. Organizations must nurture and maximize employee potential to put teams in a position to grow and for companies to succeed. Employee coaching has become a modern centerpiece of continuous performance management. Employees that go through training and coaching have shown an 88% increase in productivity when working with top coaches. But for far too long, coaching has been available only to senior-level personnel. GOCoach is B2B Saas platform that makes coaching and blended learning available to organizations with no minimum enrollment numbers. Employees, at all levels, are able to select their coaches through the platform’s marketplace while both managers and employees can track an individual’s progression to make data-driven decisions. With displacement as a result of the Great Resignation, GoCoach’s focus on upskilling ensures that companies are doing what they need to retain, attract, and build an engaged workforce in an era where competition for employees has intensified.
AlleyWatch caught up with GoCoach CEO and Cofounder Kristy McCann Flynn to learn more about how her experience as an HR professionals led her to build an all-in-one solution for investment in a company’s most important resource – its people, strategic expansion and growth plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $3.6M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
It was an oversubscribed Series Seed and Panoramic led the raise with Early Light Ventures, Zane Capital, Gaingels, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, WGU Labs, Rev Up Capital, and Global Super Angels.
Tell us about the product or service that GoCoach offers.
GoCoach offers career coaching and learning at scale so that companies can educate, empower, and retain the people they hire. The B2B SaaS platform offers self-guided coach selection, requires no minimum enrollment number, and gives managers and employees clear views into their progress. Our focus is to strengthen enabling companies to deliver personalized, continuous learning with personalized coaches through learning platform solutions.
What inspired the start of GoCoach?
As a former HR executive for close to 20 years – we spent more time, money and resources throwing people out rather than investing in them and it is the core reason why we have a war on talent, a Great Resignation and skills shortage. In addition, as a former HR buyer, I could not find an all-in-one solution to meet all employees where they are at in their learning journey to develop skills and bring outputs of changed behaviors to produce higher engagement, retention and productivity. GoCoach is that, in an all-in-one solution that provides blended learning with our coach marketplace and learning experience platform, manages workflows and data to produce goal progression and true skills that are applied into the workforce to enhance individual and team performance.
How is GoCoach different?
GoCoach is an all-in-one platform that is focused on upskilling and managing the workflows and learners to enhance goal progression outputs. In many ways, we are like a flipped LMS that provides all the learning, tools, workflow administration and data to get to true success outcomes.
What market does GoCoach target and how big is it?
Due to a global lack of investing in people, upskilling will be a trillion-dollar market in 2030 and is currently at $370B. We are an agnostic platform that sells our B2B SaaS learning into mid-market and enterprise businesses along with our latest vertical in higher education too.
What’s your business model?
We are a B2B SaaS learning platform that provides upskilling with our coach marketplace and learning experience platform. We sell cohort-based, group, and whole company learning solutions.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
GoCoach has always been remote-first and we have talent everywhere across the United States and beyond. Talent has no borders and we are bringing in people from all walks of life everywhere to continue to provide ongoing continuous education to everyone, everywhere.
What was the funding process like?
It was tough at first trying to find the right investors that mirrored our values at GoCoach and who truly saw that providing access to learning and driving change is the true path to profit. Most learning solutions and LMS’s make money off of people and companies not using their product. We make money through people and companies actually learning and applying it in the workforce which is driving our high adoption and retention rate – which is currently at 100%. We have cracked the code in driving product-led growth through our tech enablement and learning solutions and we will continue to double down on this in upcoming years.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
It was mostly about finding the right people that believed in our mission and values. We walked away from a few investors that didn’t align with our vision and values – and while that was hard when people are throwing checks at you – it was the easiest decision I made to date. I created GoCoach to stand up – not to stand down and to provide everyone the access, ability, and agility to grow in their careers with continuous education at scale. In other words, I didn’t drain my bank accounts to become a hypocrite to our mission – I drained everything I had and put it into GoCoach to provide opportunities for everyone to own their career.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
GoCoach was a successful bootstrapped company for a few years and with very limited resources and we were able to show that growth, our learner adoption, and client retention very easily. We did a lot with a little to ensure we were building and delivering upon learning potential for everyone. We were scrappy – and still are – as we are not recreating the learning wheel – we are just making the wheel work.
GoCoach was a successful bootstrapped company for a few years and with very limited resources and we were able to show that growth, our learner adoption, and client retention very easily. We did a lot with a little to ensure we were building and delivering upon learning potential for everyone. We were scrappy – and still are – as we are not recreating the learning wheel – we are just making the wheel work.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We are always learning and bringing in resources to help us continue to build what we created the past few years. We want to expand further in the mid-market and enterprise businesses – plus higher education particularly with online universities, state schools, and community colleges to continue to drive access to equity in education for all especially with underrepresented and underserved learners.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Your job with capital is to spend money to bring in great people to create more capital and profits. Focus on your people – and they will lead you to profit.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We will continue to grow, expand, have wins, have failures, and many ups and downs – and the thing that will always drive us is to provide upskilling for companies to unleash their talent, to drive engagement, to make much better workplaces, to enhance diversity and equity for all, to feel good about where they work and why – because they are being invested in with endless education to unlock opportunities today and tomorrow.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
That is a tough one since I am a foodie, so I will go by NYC neighborhoods:
- As an Upper West Sider- Mermaid Inn is my go-to
- Central Park South local – without a doubt Quality Meats
- Near our office in Madison Park – The Royalton Hotel as a roof time dining experience for lunch and dinner that is a hidden gem and amazing views of the Empire State Building
- and lastly Chinatown – hands-down The Boil
