Background

Ever-evolving software solutions put an array of applications at employees’ disposal to get work done: they’re an undeniable bonus of today’s tech-savvy workplace. But, the process of training employees on new software tools can be burdensome, expensive and fraught with inefficiencies. Making sure all employees know how to use existing tools and processes is even harder, especially as they get updated frequently. 

Constantly updating static training tools like PDFs, slides, manuals and knowledge bases to ensure employees use these powerful SaaS products consistently and correctly is cumbersome and are rarely used by employees.

‍Company Specifics‍

Born of the frustrations endured by a Sales Operations Leader and Product Manager is Spekit, a startup that seeks to solve these critical issues with its innovative in-app learning tools. Spekit markets their product to mid-market/small enterprise companies with a focus on complex or regulated industries like financial services, real estate, manufacturing, insurance and more, and connect with business applications (Salesforce/IT teams) or enablement/training teams who are responsible for deploying software across the organization.

Spekit has created an innovative product that allows employees to get up to speed on critical software and business processes without sacrificing productivity. Spekit’s learn-as-you-go platform allows for an integrated in-app experience that trains users how to use a particular product while they’re using it. Through pop ups, overlays and help windows, employees have the latest tips and how-tos right at their fingertips. Spekit’s in-app training can be used for everything from simple software updates to training new employees on entirely unfamiliar software applications and workflows, thus eliminating the need for employees to lose valuable work time attending in-person training sessions or referencing always out-dated knowledge bases. 

The Spekit platform is uniquely designed to allow a company’s training and process documentation to scale by integrating to a company’s applications to create training and track changes in their business processes via API integrations.  Spekit can be managed in a single place and deployed across any (chrome) web-based application in the whole organization. When a change or update is made to the software or how a company uses the software, the Spekit overlay automatically updates and trains the user in real time as they use the product instead of them having to refer to a PDF or learning management software outside the tool. A current Spekit customer says, “After seeing the product in action, it all clicked. Like, ‘of course you should put information where the user is. Of course, you should deliver training in a way that’s quick, integrated, simple to alter and change.’ It became so obvious.” 

Spekit is co-founded by Melanie Fellay and Zari Zahra, whom we met through another Matchstick Ventures founder, Paul Allen of Ordermark. We got to know Melanie and were impressed by her understanding of the market and her hustle. Her counterpart Zari is an incredible product leader who has worked on some of our favorite products. Bonfire Ventures out of California led the round, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to back Spekit locally.