Is a business coach really worth the investment? Executives often seek out coaches to enhance various aspects of their work, such as communication skills or productivity. Empirically, at least, these skills appear to improve with coaching. A survey by the nonprofit International Coach Federation found that 80% of executives who hired a coach experienced improved self-confidence.
Will Fouchier, a former financial analyst and founder of AI-powered coaching business AceUp, said he tried workplace coaching himself a few years ago and experienced many benefits.
“In 2015, I was transitioning from a career as a financial analyst to working at the nonprofit Clinton Global Initiative,” Fouchier told TechCrunch. “Working with the right experts quickly helped me gain new skills that transformed my performance at work and my ability to collaborate with others.”
But finding and vetting business coaches wasn't easy, Fouchier said, and the talent he found ended up costing him a pretty penny.
So Fouchier decided to found Boston-based AceUp with fellow entrepreneur Rohit Begani with the goal of making business coaching more accessible.
“Organizations, especially enterprise-level organizations, are often plagued with a myriad of team challenges, each more complex than the last,” says Foussier. “I believe that to effectively identify areas for improvement and business impact, and ensure teams are progressing in line with the needs of the organization, you need to invest in your teams and bring a data-centric approach to coaching.”
Fouchier, who has degrees in organizational behavior and hospitality management, incubated AceUp at Techstars. The startup sells a business performance analytics platform along with coaching services to assess companies' strengths and weaknesses and identify growth opportunities (for example, reskilling and upskilling employees through assessments, e-learning courses and reviews). Managers who use the platform can receive algorithmic recommendations for their individual teams (or individual employees, if they prefer) that align with the organization's overall goals.
AceUp provides personalized recommendations to staff through its mobile app, such as this one: Image credit: AceUp
“AceUp reports results, identifying and highlighting specific actions and behaviors that have driven measurable change at the team or cohort level,” Foussier says, “providing a heat map of the organization and departments, highlighting core strengths and areas of growth.”
Fouchier argues that this “data-centric” approach gives AceUp an edge over rivals such as BetterUp, HumanQ and Adecco Group's Ezra in the roughly $14 billion business coaching market.
AceUp charges a minimum of $20 per employee per month, but its C-level “expert-led” solutions can cost upwards of $1,595 per employee per month. The company hires business coaches on a contract basis, and according to Glassdoor, AceUp coaches can earn between $42,000 and $79,000 a year, a bit lower than the range posted on ZipRecruiter ($58,000 to $130,000).
“Our primary buyers are human resources and learning and development executives looking to make large-scale changes, but our users span an organization's entire workforce,” Fouchier said. “We have more than 3,500 coaches around the world who deploy our solutions at scale within the largest organizations.”
Keep in mind that business coaches vary in reach.
A 2020 academic survey found that only 58% of business executives who had tried coaching services would recommend them to others, and a survey conducted last year by online learning platform edX found that 51% of managers felt their company's learning and development programs were a “waste of time.”
But Foussier insists AceUp is succeeding, and points to the startup's growing customer base as evidence.
AceUp currently serves around 100 companies, including LVMH, L'Oreal, IBM, BNP, John Deere, WM and SpaceX. The startup recently opened a satellite office in Paris and this month closed a $22.5 million Series A funding round led by PJC with participation from Gaingels Ventures, Launchpad Venture Group, Techstars Ventures and Water Bear Ventures.
To date, AceUp, which has about 50 staff members, has raised $25 million, and Fouchier claims the nine-year-old business is profitable.
“The general technology sector slowdown has impacted our activity specifically with mid-market technology companies,” Fouchier said, “but our profitability positions us well to effectively manage these changes. We have shifted our focus to large global companies, providing greater stability and accelerating our growth strategy.”