LearnCore, a Chicago startup that makes sales training software, announced Tuesday that it has been acquired by Belgium-based sales enablement platform Showpad for $50 million.
Founded in San Francisco in 2010, LearnCore relocated to Chicago in 2011 and has steadily grown its corporate training business without raising institutional venture capital. LearnCore's co-founders Vishal Shah is also one of the creators of Catapult Chicago, a co-working space that has been home to several of Chicago's top startups like Shiftgig, Bucketfeet and Opternative.
LearnCore has grown to 45 employees, who are all joining the Showpad team in Chicago. Showpad announced last October that it was opening a Chicago office that would serve as the company's North American Headquarters.
Shah said in an interview that LearnCore took a "marginal" amount of capital from a handful of Chicago entrepreneurs and angel investors like Fieldglass founder Jay Shekhawat and Outcome Health co-founder Rishi Shah. But he said the company has grown almost entirely from its own revenue.
"I don’t even know if we used any of that [outside] capital. We’re essentially bootstrapped," Shah said. "We started focusing on revenue and really making our customers happy. Once we took that position, we never even went back to [fundraising]."
LearnCore's sales training software is used by companies like CDW, Verizon and Informatica.
"Adding LearnCore to the Showpad portfolio adds not only powerful sales readiness capabilities, but also a rich set of data and insights to continually improve the relevance and effectiveness of salespeople," Pieterjan Bouten, CEO of Showpad, said in a statement.
Correction: Shah is one of the co-creators of Catapult, along with Galen Mason, Christopher Cain and Ryan Leavitt. The article previously stated Ethan Linkner was a co-founder of Catapult.
