Lesson.ly snags high-profile investors with $1.1 million startup funding round

Remember when your mom asked you “If they jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” Your mom was trying to tell you to reject peer pressure and go your own way, but she probably has never heard of Allos Ventures and the three original co-founders of ExactTarget — all of whom just invested a total of $1.1 million in Lesson.ly, an onboarding and training-tool software startup.

Here’s my point, for the first time since starting ExactTarget and selling the company for $2.5 billion, Chris Baggott, Scott Dorsey, and Peter McCormick have all three invested in the same company again — Lesson.ly. That’s something people will take note of and could bring added attention (and future funding) to the fast-growing startup.

This startup funding round was led by Indianapolis-based Allos Ventures, a capital firm that specializes in funding and working with early-stage companies. Lesson.ly set out to raise an even $1 million, but ultimately took the extra $100,000 offered by investors. Lesson.ly plans to ramp up sales and marketing efforts with the influx of cash.

“We at Allos are big fans of the Lesson.ly team,” said Don Aquilano, managing director of Allos Ventures. “Max, Mitch and Conner are driving a great culture at the company — which is critical as the team builds for the future. They are very team and customer oriented, which is why they are growing so rapidly.

“We also believe Lesson.ly is tapping into a huge market. By building simple, elegant and effective tools for training, Lesson.ly is actually expanding the market for the small business and mid-market training category, mostly because potential customers’ options are currently limited to clumsy patchwork in-house tools, or expensive and complicated learning management systems. Lesson.ly really is addressing a large unmet need.”

Here are some quick facts about the growth at Lesson.ly:

• Revenue has grown 25 percent month-over-month for the past six months.
• They have signed very close to 100 actual paying customers.
• It’s not just a good idea, thousands of people are being trained with easy-to-use Lesson.ly software.

Lesson.ly has some high-profile customers to match its new high-profile investors.

You can learn more about Lesson.ly in this post penned by co-founder Max Yoder: Training software startup Lesson.ly growing into new office with new hires and new clients.