Given the speed at which startups often grow, disseminating important information to the folks that need it (when they need it) can become a huge hurdle.
Guru, started by Boomi founder Rick Nucci, aims to solve that problem.
Guru is a Chrome web extension that sits on top of pretty much anything you do on your computer, and intelligently surfaces the relevant information about your startup right when you need it. Today, Guru is launching out of beta alongside the announcement of a $2.7 million seed round led by FirstMark Capital (which also invested in Boomi), with participation from MSD Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and other angels.
Here’s how Guru works:
Experts in certain areas, such as product or marketing, can create cards with all the latest, verified information about a certain product release, marketing initiative, competitive landscape, etc. and that information will be surfaced to sales teams or support teams at the moment they need it.
Guru also integrates with other web services, such as Salesforce or LinkedIn.
So imagine that you’re a salesperson for a startup that’s growing rapidly, and you’re on the phone with a potential lead. Guru will know, as you hit the Salesforce page and start entering in the industry, company name, etc., what to surface to you to land the sale, such as competitive landscape for that company, market research, case studies, and anything else that the top dogs at your startup want you to use to turn that lead into a client.
If a Guru card sits too long without being updated, Guru will automatically surface that card to the expert who created it and ask if anything needs to be changed. If not, the expert can verify that seemingly stale information as still relevant and correct.
In general, the idea is that sharing between the internal development team/leadership and consumer-facing teams (like sales, support, etc.) becomes more and more difficult as a company scales. By implementing Guru, information is not only captured and updated, but easily spread to the people who need it at the moment they need it.
Guru is initially free, and bumps to the starter edition ($7/month/user) when you get to a certain amount of content, with more expensive tiers for more mature companies, topping at $15/month/user.
You can check out Guru for yourself right here.
