Spekit Welcomes Dan Scheinman, First Investor in Zoom and SentinelOne, as Board Member

DENVER, November 17, 2021 (Newswire.com) - Spekit, the leading digital adoption and enablement platform, announced today the appointment of Dan Scheinman to its board of directors.

Scheinman was the first seed investor in Spekit, which has seen more than 400 percent growth in year-over-year revenue as companies including Uber Freight, Snowflake, Outreach and more seek to streamline onboarding, drive tool adoption and maximize employee productivity by reinforcing training, resources and guidance in real-time, in any application. 

As covered recently by Business Insider, Scheinman knows a thing or two about identifying early-stage startups with market-changing potential. When Zoom's founder, Eric Yuan, started fundraising 10 years ago, he was repeatedly turned down by investors. That is until he met Schienman, who recognized so much potential in both the idea and Yuan that he wrote Zoom's first check. Today, Zoom has a market capitalization of more than $114 billion dollars.

Since then, his investment portfolio has expanded to incorporate today's most innovative companies including SentinelOne (valued at $18 billion), Arista Networks (valued at $41 billion), Treasure Data, acquired by Arm for an estimated $600 million.

"We're thrilled to welcome Dan Scheinman to the Spekit board," said Spekit CEO and Co-founder, Melanie Fellay. "He's had a front-row seat and played an integral role in the development of transformational technologies as they've launched, evolved and pulled our workplaces forward. At Spekit, we believe that the way we onboard, train and drive change within organizations is long overdue for disruption. I can't think of anyone better suited to help bring our vision to life and the future of learning at work to the masses." 

Seed investing is both an art and a science. With little data to serve as a criterion for decision-making, investors turn to more qualitative than quantitative heuristics to evaluate opportunities. For Scheinman, those who catch his eye are founders who present a clear vision, passion and commitment for disrupting the "way things have always been done."  

"What I realized was that if you really wanted to do well as an angel investor, you had to find disruptive companies where the herd wasn't betting on them," said Scheinman. "I recognized this gap with female founders about four years ago and came across Spekit. What I saw were these incredibly passionate founders (Melanie Fellay and Zari Zahra) who had seen the problem first hand and wanted to fix it. That to me is the great DNA of founders." 

Spekit addresses the widening gap between information and impact within the workplace. "We're in one of those periods where we're about to see massive change in how things get done," said Scheinman. 

"At a very simple level, we have hundreds of platforms that are driving insights within the organization. They tell you what sales reps need to do more of, where you should hire and so on. But, we have so much information that it becomes confusing and overwhelming. What we need is a platform to turn those insights into action by surfacing the right knowledge exactly when and where an employee needs it. Ultimately, I believe Spekit is that platform. This is the big gap between full change in the enterprise, from the old client server model into a data-driven enterprise. And Spekit is the foundation for how we take these insights and make them powerful, real and actionable within organizations. That's where the magic happens."

Scheinman joins accomplished Spekit board members Roseanne Wincek, co-founder and managing partner of Renegade Partners whose previous investments include Looker, Glossier and KeepTruckin and Brett Queener, Partner at Bonfire Ventures and long time Salesforce executive, whose personal angel investments include Pendo, Guru and Outreach. 

Spekit also has a star-studded suite of board observers including Mallun Yen, founder and partner at Operator Collective and Jaclyn Freeman Hester, partner at Foundry Group.  

"Just like Spekit has attracted all-star talent, it has also attracted all-star board members," said Scheinman. "For me, it's a real honor to be affiliated with and working alongside some of the most innovative, strong and passionate individuals in venture who care deeply about this company."

Source: Spekit