Upskilling the corporate workforce through personalization | Why we invested in Sharpist

Investing in early-stage startups that grow very quickly, we have learned repeatedly what the importance of a good and skilled team is. Empowering the existing employees to achieve their individual potentials is directly linked to the potential of a company to grow and continue adapting to the new challenges that come with the ever-changing dynamic market we are in. Simply put: We believe people are the strongest asset a company has. 

That’s why we believe in Sharpist. Sharpist has not only built a solution to empower employees through affordable digital one-on-one coaching, but has gone one step further and figured out ‘HOW’ to do this in a hyper-personalized and engaging way centered around an individual's goals while still driving the overall organizational goals. 

Corporate L&D centered around technology, data and engagement

Traditional corporate coaching is normally reserved for top-tier management because it is quite expensive. It is also very difficult to measure the impact of these sessions over a long period of time and depends solely on the willingness of an employee to be engaged. Oftentimes these coaching experiences or corporate sessions are forgotten after the usual 3-day-workshop, costing corporates tons of money.

Sharpist has developed an extremely user-friendly software platform that combines access to high-quality coaches at an affordable price and intuitive applications for coaches, employees and HR departments. This gives access to coaching not only to top-tier management level employees, but also has a trickle-down effect on more organizational levels, who will eventually be the leaders of tomorrow, ready to take on these roles due to upskilling.

To build an ecosystem of digital learning, Sharpist complements its coaching product with goal setting, coaching sessions and micro-learning tasks - making the coaching experience of each employee engaging and hyper-personalized to their own needs entirely through a digital interface. HR departments now also get visibility on the overall skill level of their employees through analytics and can take strategic level decisions leveraging their existing workforce. The impressive thing is even though HR has visibility on the overall analytics, the data of an employee is still owned solely by the employee themself, making it a safe space for employees to address their weaknesses and better their strengths. Big corporates such as Porsche, Lingoda and Otto Group have trusted Sharpist to transform their environment of learning and development within their companies.

This hyper-personalization has been achieved because of a stellar team of founders - Hendrik and Fabian - and the amazing team supporting them, who are focused on always delivering a superior user experience to keep employees engaged.  

Hendrik (CEO) is a psychologist by training and acted as a former entrepreneur in the Rocket Internet universe, scaling up new businesses with a razor-sharp focus on fast and solid execution combined with his domain knowledge in this field. 

Fabian (COO) graduated from business school Bocconi and gained vast operational experience as Head of Global Sales & Supply Operations at GetYourGuide. He combines strong analytical skills with the ability to drive up commercial teams like sales and marketing.

Both have already proven their leadership qualities. In the past year outstanding senior talent like Khurram (CPO, Standord graduate, former entrepreneur and McKinsey consultant) and Joshua (VP Engineering, former tech leader of Soundcloud, tumblr, bloomon and more) joined the team to bring Sharpist to the next level. 

We are thrilled to be part of this journey of transformation in the corporate learning & development ecosystem truly centered around technology and its people.