We've raised $12 million to build people skills in the flow of work

Originally posted here.

We’re thrilled to announce our $12 million Series A led by PeakSpan Capital, with additional participation from Rainfall Ventures and our existing investors.

Three years ago, Arist pioneered message-based learning — a cheaper, faster, and more effective way to deliver people skills training where people already spend their time: via tools like SMS, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and email.

Today, Arist helps leading companies like Amazon, Intel, and EY build and reinforce people skills in the flow of work. By meeting busy employees where they are, Arist delivers adoption, completion, and satisfaction rates of >90% while seamlessly tracking behavior change and knowledge retention, ultimately creating meaningful learning and performance outcomes.

Our mission

Nearly all modern corporate learning takes place in learning management systems, classrooms, and apps, where learning experiences are one-time, long-form, and hard to access. As a result, L&D teams spend millions on training that is seldom seen, completed, or adopted.

At the same time, over two decades of behavior change and knowledge retention research have gone mostly unimplemented. We know, for example, that the majority of learning (especially people skills) needs to be contextual, bite-size, spaced, and action-oriented to deliver meaningful outcomes, yet most current learning experiences are hours-long and take place via video in one sitting. This makes it impossible to prove measurable outcomes or impact.

By meeting people on the tools they use every day, Arist helps teams quickly create incredible action-based learning experiences that anyone can engage with in seconds, while seamlessly implementing cutting-edge research and tracking long-term impact. We believe this is a new era for corporate learning.

What the fundraise is going towards

This funding will go to three things:

Doubling down on manager development

• We’re focusing our product to help companies build successful people skills where they’ll have the greatest impact — for people leaders and people-facing teams.
• People skills are built through practice and reinforcement. We’re improving our analytics, delivery, and course experience to help people build skills that will last.

Scaling Arist to the rest of the Fortune 500

• Today, Arist helps develop people skills at nearly 10% of the Fortune 500. We’ve proven that Arist works — now, we’re excited to bring Arist to far more teams.
• If you’re a Talent, HR, or L&D leader, we’d love to chat and see how we can help. Book time with team member here.

Building a world-class team

• We have an unbelievably driven team of Aristians focused on making people more capable through employee-centric learning experiences.
• We’re building a generational company and are looking for team members who are excited about the long-term impact their work will have — join us!

A concluding thought

We’re unbelievably grateful to everyone who has played a role in bringing Arist to this point. To our customers, investors, advisors, friends, and family members: we couldn’t have gotten here without you, and we’re so thankful for your support and guidance. It means the world.

While this funding is a milestone, it’s also a promise: by inventing a better way to learn, it’s our responsibility to help people build impactful skills that last a lifetime. And we’re just getting started.

Here’s to meeting people where they are.