Exclusive: FranklinCovey Buys Management Training Platform Strive For $20M

Performance improvement company FranklinCovey has acquired San Francisco-based management training platform Strive for about $20 million, the companies told Crunchbase News.

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Salt Lake City-based FranklinCovey helps organizations address issues that require behavioral changes. The company’s content and training is geared toward helping employees improve in areas including leadership development and individual effectiveness.

About five years ago, it rolled out a subscription business, All Access Pass, which gives clients access to all of FranklinCovey’s content solutions and learning modalities. That business has grown to $100 million in revenue since it began, and Strive’s capabilities will be integrated into All Access Pass, according to the companies.

“Strive at their core, what stood out to us was we believe we have best-in-class content that helps organizations solve these large people-related challenges that they have,” FranklinCovey President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Walker said in an interview. “Strive is on the other side of it, they have best-in-class technology that measurably improves peoples’ ability to change and maintain that change in behavior.”

Strive’s 17 employees will join FranklinCovey, with CEO Will Houghteling becoming the company’s vice president of product and platform. 

“What we’re hoping for post-integration is to take this approach to behavior change at scale and take their world-class content and services and combine it with our learning approach and power their behavior change for customers,” Houghteling said. 

FranklinCovey acquired online training platform Jhana in 2017, and one of Jhana’s investors that overlapped with Strive introduced FranklinCovey to the company. Houghteling said he was impressed with FranklinCovey’s scale, along with its content and services. 

Strive wasn’t looking for an acquisition when it was introduced to FranklinCovey, Houghteling said. The startup was actually in the process of raising its Series A round and had secured multiple term sheets, but ultimately decided the acquisition would help it achieve its goals faster.

Strive had raised at least $3.8 million in funding from investors including NextView Ventures and Kapor Capital, per Crunchbase data.

For FranklinCovey customers, the Strive acquisition will be a “big enhancement for them in terms of ease of accessibility,” Walker said, while Strive customers will have access to FranklinCovey’s content. 

“Strive will help us implement this great content we have and increase scale, but in a more measurable, social learning, engaging way,” Walker said.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Photo courtesy of Strive.