Middle: Jennifer Dulski, CEO & Founder at Rising Workforce, along with her management crew

Rising Workforce

Firms enhance their budgets on management coaching packages but fail to obtain outcomes commensurate with their spending. Jennifer Dulski, an entrepreneur and an govt at tech firms, is altering that.

“Rising Workforce is the product I wanted I had as a pacesetter of groups all through my profession,” mentioned Dulski. “Whereas I used to be fortunate to have entry to teaching and coaching, I by no means felt like I had the instruments to take what I realized and convey it to life with my groups.”

The pandemic exacerbated the necessity for team-building instruments—staff felt disconnected. But, elevating cash was difficult even with a demonstrated want and a founder with road creds.

Dulski is among the many few who’ve raised VC as a solo feminine founder. The proportion of {dollars} going to all female-founder groups dropped from 2.6% in 2019 to 2.1% to 2.3% through the pandemic, in keeping with PitchBook. She raised $3 million.

This Founder Has Abilities

Dulski was an govt at Fb, Google, and Yahoo. She helped run Change.org, a web-based platform that empowers individuals to create and signal petitions to make change for 5 years. Notably, that is her second venture-backed firm. She bought DealMap to Google. Dulski teaches administration on the Stanford Graduate Faculty of Business and wrote Purposeful: Are You a Supervisor or a Motion Starter? about how individuals can begin actions about causes they care about.

“The by way of line for me was all the time that at any time when I noticed people and groups feeling valued, related, and motivated, I noticed organizations be extra profitable,” mentioned Dulski. She had govt coaches and was provided coaching. However, “I felt like I used to be being taught to fish after which despatched again to the lake with a binder as a substitute of a fishing pole.”

Management coaching falls into two buckets.

• A studying administration system that you simply do by your self. These programs usually obtain low utilization as a result of there aren’t any instruments to carry the training ideas again to your groups.
• Facilitated reside periods, both in particular person or digital, are very well-received. However they’re costly and onerous to scale. These packages usually don’t have the instruments to carry again to the groups.

Utilizing digital software kits, Rising Workforce teaches managers new expertise and how you can implement what they’ve realized to change into higher leaders and empower staff. By serving to groups perceive one another higher and construct belief, Rising Workforce goals to allow leaders to reach a altering office.

The preliminary prototype was profitable with a small group of managers who wished a software that assessed individuals’s pure skills, how they wished to be appreciated, and their working type preferences. Nevertheless, most leaders didn’t need a software to make use of one-on-one with people; they wished one thing to carry their groups collectively as a crew.

In 2021, Rising Workforce’s launched a sequence of on-line kits that allow leaders run participating, experiential, interactive periods with their groups, on their very own, in particular person, or remotely. This model of the product has been enormously profitable. Clients embody massive firms, small companies, nonprofits, and colleges.

Even With Road Cred, Elevating Capital Was Exhausting

Dulski bootstrapped the corporate for the primary yr, 2020.

The pandemic made Rising Workforce much more crucial. Three-quarters of all information jobs had been distant or hybrid. Managers had been overwhelmed, burned out, and wanted extra instruments to carry their groups collectively once they now not met in particular person commonly.

Even so, Dulski, an skilled fundraiser when market situations are lower than superb, took six months to boost the preliminary seed spherical. She had raised cash for her earlier venture-backed firm, Dealmap, through the 2008 financial disaster. In February 2021, Dulski raised $3 million in an preliminary seed spherical. The lead investor was Feminine Founders Fund.

“Fundraising is the one time in my life I ever wished I had been a person,” mentioned Dulski. “It simply feels so tough typically to boost cash.”

The arrogance hole between women and men—even for extremely profitable ladies—is actual. “Whereas I’ve felt extremely profitable in different components of my life and work, that wasn’t the case for fundraising. However I used to be ashamed to confess it. Saying it appears like admitting defeat or giving an excuse. And it made me marvel if perhaps my concepts weren’t ok,” Dulski acknowledged.

Additionally actual is the funding hole between women and men. Funding in mixed-gender entrepreneurial groups is on the rise, in keeping with PitchBook. However the share of VC for all women-founder groups is reducing. In 2019, 2.6% of enterprise capital went in the direction of all-female founder groups, which dropped to 2.1 and a couple of.3% amid the pandemic. There aren’t any numbers for solo feminine founders, however I think the numbers could be extra dismal.

Funding in Rising Workforce has paid off. “Our ARR [Annual Recurring Revenue] is up greater than 5X over the previous yr,” mentioned Dulski. Companies based by ladies delivered higher income—greater than twice as a lot per dollar invested—than these based by males, making women-owned firms higher investments for financial backers.

Fundraising did get simpler. In August 2022, Roble Ventures was the primary to precise curiosity, and so they led the spherical. Dulski raised what she calls the seed plus spherical. “That spherical solely took me three weeks. I used to be so stunned,” she mentioned.

What obstacles have you ever overcome to boost cash in your firm?