PeopleLinx raises $3.5M round led by Osage Partners

PeopleLinx has closed a $3.46 million equity round led by Osage Partners, according to an SEC filing and confirmed by the company.
Previous investors MissionOG, based in Center City, and Greycroft Partners, based in New York City, also participated. That brings the company’s total funding to just over $8 million, including last summer’s $1.5 million debt raise, which came during a management shakeup.
Osage Partners, based in Bala Cynwyd, has led PeopleLinx’s last three rounds. When asked if Osage owned a majority of the company, spokesman Michael Idinopulos declined to comment.
The funding will go toward building out the company’s tech team, which has largely been outsourced to Old City’s Arcweb this past year, Idinopulos said. (A group of PeopleLinx developers, led by former CTO Keith Fitzgerald, left to pursue their own startup last fall.) Newly-installed CTO Don Nawrocki is looking to hire about 10 engineers. He recently hired Robert DeMuth, who worked with Nawrocki at GSI Commerce, as the company’s development lead.

We're in growth mode. The attrition has been standard stuff.

That tech team will work on developing the latest version of PeopleLinx’s product, which is focused on using social media and Salesforce data to help sales reps close deals. Idinopulos said the company is investing in user adoption by improving its user interface and adding features like live chat with its team of five social business strategists, as well as focusing beyond LinkedIn (think: Twitter, Salesforce).
The raise comes at a time when the 25-person PeopleLinx team is in flux, with a handful of departures on the marketing and sales side, including Head of Inside Sales W. Alex Turner; VP of Partnerships Lena Keares, now at San Francisco’s Marketo; social business strategist Chris Gera, now at BuzzFeed; account executive Christopher Allan, now at Qvidian, and marketing manager Josh Druck, now at Center City’s Sidecar. When reached for comment, Druck said he was “looking to take on an operations role in a data-centric tech company, and had a particular interest in working in the e-commerce marketing space where Sidecar lives.”
“We’re in growth mode,” Idinopulos said, when asked about the departures. “The attrition has been standard stuff. Some of it was voluntary, some of it was for performance. It’s all just natural turnover.”
One social business strategist, Kyle Blackstone, who left in March, said he left because the company was no longer the right fit for him, especially after the tech team left.
“I decided to leave because my role became a recipe for burnout and there was not much room for me to grow or advance within the company,” he wrote in an email. “After the development team left, it seemed as if the whole culture and atmosphere changed, and not for the better.”
He declined to elaborate.
Meanwhile, PeopleLinx is focused on next month’s Salesforce conference, Dreamforce, its biggest conference of the year. Idinopulos confirmed that the crew would be giving out Tastykakes again.