Trainual, a SaaS platform designed to help growing businesses standardize policies and processes, has closed a $27 million Series B round, bringing the company’s total funding to $33.75 million.
The round was led by Altos Ventures, a major venture capital firm based out of Menlo Park, Calif. Trainual founder and CEO Chris Ronzio said in an interview that while Trainual received several term sheets, the company landed on Altos Ventures because of the firm’s vision for building long-term companies.
“They think more in terms of decades instead of years,” Ronzio said.
Several new investors also backed the round, including The Shark Group CEO Daymond John — formerly of ABC’s “Shark Tank” — and Indeed Co-Founder and Chairman Rony Kahan. Trainual also saw continued support from major investors in the company’s $6.75 million Series A round.
“I wish Trainual was around when I was starting and scaling my company. It’s a game-changer that is going to save growing businesses a ton of time, allowing them to focus on the most crucial aspects of building their companies,” said John of The Shark Group. “The team at Trainual gets what it takes to scale a small business. For me, their shared passion for empowering entrepreneurs make this partnership a natural fit.”
Scottsdale-based Trainual has become one of Arizona’s most successful startups, seeing $7 million in revenue last year. The company saw huge growth during 2020 as the pandemic forced a surge in remote work.
“Businesses can’t grow on scattered documents, or spend their time looking over their peoples’ shoulders, especially in a hybrid or remote world,” Ronzio said. “Our platform keeps teams aligned and accountable by equipping them with the answers they need to do their jobs autonomously. That way, business owners can finally step out of the daily operations and focus on growing their business.”
Currently, more than 5,500 businesses across multiple industries in 177 countries rely on the Trainual platform to manage and scale their operations.
Ronzio said they always planned on raising a Series B round. “We want to be number one in this industry,” he said. Trainual will use this money to further improve and innovate its platform, while also doubling down on its global expansion.
Trainual’s Series A round put the company on the map and in front of a lot more businesses, Ronzio says. The funding allowed Trainual to stop requiring customers to add a credit card to begin a free trial of the platform. Consequently, free trial requests increased by 500%.
Ronzio said he and his team learned a lot about customer conversions from the increase in free trial requests, but they learned even more from the non-conversions. This knowledge has provided the foundation for where the company will go next.
Ronzio and his team learned that many users weren’t becoming paying customers simply because they didn’t know how to use the product. To address this issue, the company will be using the Series B funds to make two major changes over the next several months.
First, the company is starting to build a huge community of “Trainual-certified consultants.” These consultants will be based around the world. There are currently 100 consultants in this network and Ronzio predicts it will continue to grow.
In addition to providing support for using the Trainual platform and insights for defining policies and procedures that will scale, consultants will offer other advice for growing small businesses across a number of industries.
Trainual will utilize this network and artificial intelligence technologies to make the product easier to use, more efficient and more able to provide more individualized help.
To support these major goals, Trainual will be hiring more than 50 new employees across all departments over the next year. Ronzio said that while the company is open to remote workers, Trainual will still focus on hiring people located in Arizona.