Harvard Medical School Spinoff Gets $15M to Expand Sales Coaching Platform

Qstream, a Burlington-based Harvard Medical School spinoff, announced on Thursday it has raised $15 million to expand its coaching software platform for sales professionals within the United States and abroad.

The round was led by Boston venture capital firm Polaris Partners, with participation from existing investors Frontline Ventures, Launchpad Venture Group, and Excel Venture Management. As part of the funding round, Gary Swart, partner at Polaris and former CEO of oDesk, is joining the company's board.

Duncan Lennox, CEO and co-founder at Qstream, told me the company will use the new capital, which brings total funding to $23 million, to add around 50 to 60 employees to over the next year to its current workforce of 110. He said some of the money will be used to invest in marketing the company and making it more of a household name for sales organizations. The company will also continue investing in increasing its engineering capabilities, which Lennox said has tripled since the beginning of the year.

The company has more than 300 enterprise customers, including LinkedIn, Mastercard, Pfizer and Sun Life Financial. Lennox said the company has seen over 1,000 percent cumulative annual revenue growth over the last three years. While he declined to give specific revenue figures, he said it's "north of $10 million at this point."

Qstream essentially serves as a mobile coaching platform to help sales professionals improve various skills and retain that knowledge — or as Lennox puts it, "rewire their brains." On the knowledge retention front, Lennox said it has been able to increase knowledge retention by up to 170 percent over more traditional methods of learning. Sales managers also use the platform to track the progress of their employees. Lennox said the platform combines neuroscience research with big data and analytics to improve sales results for clients, with a 20 percent increase in annual quota attainment, a 3 percent improvement in gross margin, and a 12 percent gain in market share.

What separates Qstream from other software-as-a-service, Lennox added, is how it has been able to scientifically prove the effectiveness of its platform through over 20 peer-reviewed clinical trials: "I have never seen software before that actually has hard proven science that works, and that’s kind of exciting and different for us."

Aside from Burlington, Qstream also has offices in San Francisco and Dublin.

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