The Chilean startup Yourney, dedicated to developing leadership and talent in organizations, recently announced the raising of $1.6 million in an investment round supported by the investment fund Invexor and strategic investors and advisors, such as Bernardo Quinn, director and ex-CHRO of Telefónica at Global level; Hernán Orellana, former general manager of Microsoft in Chile and director of BCI; and Karina Awad, senior VP human resources of Grupo Axxo in Mexico.
The money raised will be used in three main strategic areas of the company. First, they will strengthen their technology platform and product to make it more scalable, with the goal of impacting millions of people in different countries. This includes a strong investment in data security to comply with international standards such as GDPR, as well as the implementation of automation and artificial intelligence tools.
Secondly, they will strengthen their commercial team to exceed the $1.5 million goal and expand into new markets, with a special focus on Mexico for next year and a vision of growth throughout Latin America. Finally, they will strengthen their operational capabilities to manage significantly higher demand and be prepared for a more ambitious scaling.
The startup, founded in 2021 by Martin Mac-Clure, CEO, and Nicolas Morales, CCO, operates today with a digital platform that combines advanced technology and a human approach. Thanks to an agile process, it identifies development focuses, matches employees with suitable coaches and then everything is managed by the platform, where employees live a personalized development journey and the company has information on key developments online.
“Our platform integrates modern and efficient technologies that enable a seamless experience for both companies, coaches and participants. We use an architecture based on Node.js and Vue.js, backed by a robust MongoDB database, which allows us to scale efficiently” Nicolas Morales, CCO of Yourney, told Contxto.
Challenges Yourney solves
The startup addresses fundamental challenges faced by today’s organizations. In a world of rapid change, companies need to constantly transform, and its founders firmly believe that this transformation starts with people. At Yourney, they focus on developing the “power skills” needed to face these challenges, seeking to bring out the best version of leaders, teams and organizations in Latin America.
“Today’s organizational success depends largely on emerging leadership and middle management,” says Morales. “We work with them to accelerate their transformation processes, enabling better jobs, building high-performance teams, strengthening organizational culture and, ultimately, achieving extraordinary results,” he adds.
The startup’s approach has allowed them to enter the Chilean market with strength, accompanying hundreds of leaders and talents in various clients in the mining, banking, insurance and retail sectors, among others. They also have a technology designed to be simple and accessible to users, while maintaining the necessary power to transform organizations.
The platform allows its clients to have at a click of a button the possibility of developing 10, 100 or 1000 people, without losing quality or the transforming experience, and they expect to close 2024 with sales of between US$ 400 thousand and US$ 500 thousand, while expectations for next year are to reach between US$ 1.5 million and US$ 2 million. The focus next year is to consolidate its operations in Chile and Mexico, and to approach the European market through Spain. They are also in talks with clients in Colombia and Peru.
