PeopleLinx raises $3.5M on top of its Series A

PeopleLinx has raised an additional $3.5 million on top of its Series A round.

The Philadelphia-based social sales startup plans to use that capital to speed up development on its product, hiring 10 engineers to help with the acceleration, according to PeopleLinx chief marketing officer Michael Idinopulos.

The company’s platform, PeopleLinx 4, integrates Twitter, LinkedIn and Salesforce.com to enhance the selling process across social networks.

“We’re really delivering a complete and comprehensive guidance to sales professionals on how to engage their buyers across a range of channels,” Idinopulos said. “We are building a really cutting edge product that uses sales data social network integration to drive product sales behaviors.”

It will present the product at Salesforce annual conference, Dreamforce ’15, held in San Francisco next month. Idinopulos expects that conference to draw more than 100,000 attendees.

The $3.5 million comes from Philadelphia-based venture capital firms Osage Venture Partners and Mission OG, as well as New York-based Greycroft Partners.

“We’re excited about PeopleLinx because they’ve developed a data-driven way to improve sales behavior,” said Nate Lentz, a managing partner at Osage Venture Partners. “They’re bringing together [customer relationship management] data, social networking and sales best practices to automatically guide each salesperson to the most effective behaviors. It’s a unique approach to a huge opportunity.”

The equity that PeopleLinx traded for the VCs’ funding was not disclosed.

PeopleLinx also raised $1.5 million of convertible debt in July 2014, and opened its Series A with $3 million capital infusion in March 2013, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company launched in 2009, originally as a training firm for social selling. It has since pivoted, with more focus on developing its technology, which it has done at a rapid pace.

Its previous platform, People Linx 3, came out this time last year.

“Sales follow-through used to depend on the rep’s diligence and the sales manager’s persistence,” said David DiStefano, the startup’s chief revenue officer. “PeopleLinx is changing that by bringing consistency to sales process. Our technology automatically prompts salespeople to take the actions that make them successful.”

Idinopulos added that as PeopleLinx scales with help from its new funding, it may eye expansion opportunities in the future, perhaps on the West Coast, or abroad in Europe and Asia.

Regardless of future growth, Idinopulos said there are no plans to leave the great tech talent it has found in Philadelphia.

One of PeopleLinx’s primary founders, Patrick Baynes, left the business in 2014to focus on his new startup GameTimeUpdates, which provides social media marketing software for the restaurant industry. He had previously been a LinkedIn employee before building PeopleLinx.

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