A Serial Entrepreneur and $3M

Edtech firm Tech 2000 has been developing three new products in Herndon over the last year that have attracted large corporate customers and now some funding.

The company raised $3M from a debt and stock offering and will use it to expand two of its new products and launch a third, says founder Tien Wong, here with EverFi CEO Tom Davidson. Appnetic, Tech 2000’s mobile app launched last year, gives sales people information about a product or service that they're trying to sell. It could be anything from videos to white papers to special financing they can offer. The company has already invested $1.5M in the product and scooped up customers like HP, Cisco and ShoreTel. Tien says the company will release a self-serve version of the product, which is now a managed offering.

The company also recently launched Lumious, a learning analytics platform that corporate training and HR departments use to track how well employees are absorbing job training. Companies get real-time analytics on how well employees are scoring. The analytics also give clues on how well certain personality traits do in certain roles. The company is developing a third product called Learn Pulse, which gauges sentiment during a class or training session. Analytics are sent to a teacher’s iPad during the instruction on whether the class is keeping up or falling behind.

Tien says the company will focus on the three products for now and get annual growth to 30%. The DC tech veteran, who also runs Lore Systems and the wildly popular Connectpreneur event, says there’s still a lot of energy around the local tech economy. Now the community is seeing more experienced entrepreneurs starting second and third companies. The challenge is still a Series A funding gap, but he says good entrepreneurs are persevering with minimal cash.