Cloverleaf, a Cincinnati, OH-based automated coaching technology company, raised $7.3M in Series A extension funding. In conjunction with the round, Darrin Murriner, CEO and Cofounder, replied to our questions about the company, the funding, achievements so far, and future plans.
FinSMEs: Hi Darrin, can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What’s your background?
I had my first entrepreneurial experience in 5th grade selling samples of pens from my dad’s specialty advertising business to my classmates. I made enough in 1 week to buy the original Nintendo Entertainment System. However, our public education system conditioned me to think of focusing on a career path. I started my career in Audit of all places but knew it would be a path to leadership, which came after 5 years in Audit. I went on to spend another 10 years in Corporate in various leadership roles, but I wanted an opportunity to bet on myself to build something new and bring something meaningful to the world.
FinSMEs: Let’s speak about Cloverleaf. What is the market problem you want to solve? What is the real opportunity?
We set out to bring transparency to the behavioral layer of how work gets done. The human interactions that make the difference between failure and wild success in team-based work. We felt there were some major shifting sands in the workplace that included things like a shift to knowledge work, remote and hybrid teams, the digitization of our work lives that have all created opportunities to bring a technology platform to coach everyone in an organization – not just the top 2% of employees.
FinSMEs: What are the features differentiating the product from competitors?
First, we provide an excellent user experience that is focused on an employee’s individual workplace development. Most enterprise tools are built to serve the enterprise and not the individual employee. Second, we start with common behavioral assessments that you know and love (DISC, Enneagram, CliftonStrengths, etc) and provide a single, Netflix-style platform to deploy behavioral assessments across the enterprise. Third, we are the world’s first automated coaching platform that scales to the entire enterprise and is integrated with the tools that employees use everyday (email, calendar, Slack and MS Teams).
FinSMEs: You just announced a new funding round. Please, tell us more about it.
We are very excited about some of the new investors we have added to our cap table including Advantage Capital, Conductive VC and Cintrifuse Capital. This funding brings us to total funding of $20 million and allows us to get to cash flow positive and accelerate growth.
FinSMEs: Can you share some numbers and achievements of the business?
We were recently named to the Inc 5000 as one of the fastest growing private companies in the US. We serve over 1.3 million employees in over 30,000 teams and in over 1,000 companies. We are also regularly named a best workplace in both our local markets as well as national recognition for an engaged and supported workforce.
FinSMEs: What are your medium-term plans?
We are focused on adding to our leadership team on the go to market side of our business. Additionally, we continue to invest in AI and enhance our capabilities to further contextualize the coaching our system provides for even more value to individual employees as well as the learning and talent leaders in some of the largest companies in the world.
FinSMEs
27/03/2024