Where are the best sales jobs? NC startup creates platform for staff to rate companies
A young Chapel Hill startup led by the former head of sales of the Triangle e-commerce firm ChannelAdvisor has raised $1 million in a seed round from investors.
RepVue, founded by Ryan Walsh, is creating a platform where sales representatives can anonymously rate their employers across a variety of categories.
Too often, Walsh said, potential employees are approaching career decisions with little information. But on RepVue, a potential employee can see how current sales staff rate a company’s base compensation, incentives, culture and diversity, among other measurements. RepVue also tracks what percentage of sales employees meet their quota and attrition rates. All of the individual ratings are combined into an overall score.
At the moment, “The interview process is so one sided from an information flow standpoint,” Walsh said in an interview. “Where do sales people go to access the real source of truth?”
So far, RepVue has received nearly 17,000 ratings for companies since it opened its platform up last year. At first, reviews were concentrated on Triangle-based companies, where Walsh had connections.
But now, companies from across the country are getting reviewed.
The company verifies its users to make sure reviews are legitimate. Only companies with at least seven reviews have a public rating.
And as the hiring market remains in flux during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to record numbers of people quitting their jobs to look for new opportunities, more recruiters and companies are paying attention to RepVue’s burgeoning platform, Walsh said. In April, for example, a record 4 million people voluntarily quit their jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On top of that, Walsh said, a large number of startups have raised money in recent months and are building out sales teams.
RepVue’s plan for growth
As RepVue grows its ratings database, it hopes to make money by charging companies for access to data and creating a matching service that would connect companies and potential hires.
At the moment, the company is geared toward rating companies’ sales teams. But Walsh said they could expand into professions and teams in the future.
As part of the funding round, Scot Wingo, the former CEO of ChannelAdvisor, is joining RepVue’s board of directors.
Wingo said he believes companies will be willing to invest in RepVue’s services.
“Companies are spending $5,000 to $30,000 to hire people that may or may not be a great fit,” he said in an email. “What if you spent $12,000 a year to improve your retention rate and save losing four to five people. That’s the smarter approach.”
RepVue is nominally based in Chapel Hill, though it doesn’t yet have an office and its committed to a flexible working environment. The first handful of employees are all based in the Triangle, however.
Walsh said RepVue will use the $1 million round to hire more staff and acquire more users to build out its ratings database. The company hopes to triple its number of ratings by next year.
The round was led by Atlanta-based Knoll Ventures and Charleston, S.C.-based Alerion Ventures.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/nRALewsinnovate
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 8:00 AM.
