LevelEleven Rebrands Flagship App 'Compete' As Company Growth Continues
DETROIT -- The Detroit customer relationship management and enterprise game development company LevelEleven Tuesday announced that it had renamed its flagship product, Contest Builder, as Compete.
The company, a spinoff of online promotions manager ePrize LLC, said the new name more accurately reflects its focus on motivating employee behavior by offering competition programs rather than one-off sales contests.
Compete also unveiled a new app interface, designed to modernize its look and simplify the user experience. LevelEleven also will introduce new pricing options, enabling customers to sign up for a month-to-month agreement as well as the existing one-year commitment.
"We found Compete's former name, Contest Builder, to be too narrowly focused on the idea of single contests, but our clients have been using the product to motivate their teams in ways we never imagined," said Bob Marsh, CEO of LevelEleven. "That has been a bit of an eye opener and validates our belief that competition is an extraordinarily powerful motivator. We will continue to innovate our product in ways that will allow clients to create even more energy and excitement around the activities most important to growing their business."
Over the past six months, LevelEleven has seen sales and service teams adopt the app to transform the way they work and impact behavior. The product allows managers to run multiple competitions simultaneously, targeting employees at various levels and motivating different personalities to focus on everyday tasks that impact a company's bottom line.
The new updates come as LevelEleven experiences tremendous adoption of the app. Since launching in October 2012, the company increased its total number of customers to 75, including Delta Airlines, Kelly Services and Comcast.
LevelEleven currently has 10 employees and two openings, one for a lead designer and another in sales.
Earlier this month, LevelEleven closed its seed-financing round with an additional $500,000 in new funding for a total of $1.5 million.
The seed round was led by Detroit Venture Partners with additional funding from private equity investor Rick Inatome, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and The First Step Fund.
The company, located in downtown Detroit's Madison Building, previously raised the initial $1 million in October 2012.
The new financing will be used to help further accelerate product development and invest in sales and marketing.
Said Marsh: "Over the past quarter we've made huge strides in establishing our brand, further developing our software and acquiring new customers, so the timing was perfect to secure additional funding. Having the support of such prominent investors is a real validation of the work we're doing to help motivate employee behavior in the enterprise sales and CRM space."
LevelEleven's initial seed funding was raised by Detroit Venture Partners, the venture capital firm known for investing in seed and early-stage technology companies committed to playing a part of the revitalization of downtown Detroit.
"LevelEleven has experienced significant success since its launch last year and I believe the company is in a great position to capitalize on the growth of the enterprise gamification industry," said Rick Inatome, who currently serves as the CEO of InfiLaw Corp., a national consortium of independent law schools, and who formerly founded Computer City and Inacomp Computer Centers. "I share Bob's philosophy that meaningful gamification is the key to motivating employees and believe that LevelEleven has tapped into an unmet market need that gives the company tremendous growth potential in the future."
Originally developed by digital engagement leader ePrize and debuted at Dreamforce 2011, LevelEleven launched as its own company in October 2012, and is ranked as the No. 1 most popular gamification offering in the Salesforce AppExchange.
More at http://leveleleven.com.
Detroit Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in seed and early-stage technology companies with a strong emphasis on Detroit-based startups. In addition to capital, the company provides hands-on coaching, mentorship, support, and resources to help drive growth and success. The firm was founded in 2010 by Josh Linkner, Dan Gilbert and Brian Hermelin.
More at http://detroitventurepartners.com.
