Businesses often plan their growth strategies on spreadsheets, but Drivetrain wants to provide a faster alternative for financial planning and decision-making. The self-proclaimed “Google Maps for Business Growth” startup announced today that it has raised $15 million from Elevation Capital, Jungle Ventures and Venture Highway and 25 angel investors.
One of Drivetrain’s goals is to help companies identify performance problems before they impact their bottom line. It integrates with over 200 business tools, including Salesforce, Netsuite, Quickbooks, Workday, and Looker, and provides a “measurement system” in simple formulas to help companies create financial models and visualizations.
Drivetrain currently focuses on finance teams in midmarket and enterprise B2B technology businesses. CEO Alok Goel, who co-founded Drivetrain with CTO Tarkeshwar Thakur, was previously a partner at Elevation Capital, which has $670 million in assets under management. In his six years at the company, Goel has reviewed hundreds of SaaS companies and served on many of their boards.
“One question that struck me was, ‘What is the estimate of the company’s execution?’ How does a company consistently achieve goals quarter after quarter? Why do some companies grow fast while others stagnate? ” he said.
He observed that high-performing companies use data in their decision-making. “Essentially because complex businesses like SaaS, the pieces have to fall in place at the right time for it to come later,” added Goel. “This requires systems thinking and a data-driven approach.”
Drivetrain software provides revenue and customer consolidation reporting with line items for analysis and insights
By connecting to different software, Drivetrain can integrate data and make it easier for teams to understand, helping them create financial plans, plan-to-actual tracking, what-if scenarios and root-cause analysis. To do that, Drivetrain created a language called DTML (Drivetrain Modeling Language), or programs that show how businesses run in an easy-to-understand spreadsheet user interface.
One of its customers, Ermet, used Drivetrain to reduce the time it spent exporting and integrating data across its Quickbooks accounts, Excel files, and Chargable data. By automating its financial reporting and monthly forecasting, Airtrain was able to make its financial data and business metrics accessible to everyone, which increased collaboration because teams no longer had to wait for monthly reports from the finance team.
Drivetrain Group
Another client, MindTickle, used Drivetrain to automate data collection and consolidation for its sales, marketing and revenue operations teams. This makes accurate numbers accessible at all times, and employees no longer need to wade through reams of individual spreadsheets.
There are legacy tools for enterprise users, such as Anaplan and Adaptive, but Goel says they require heavy customization and consultants to implement within 6 to 12 months. Drivetrain streamlines processes by rapidly integrating with ERPs, CRMs, marketing software and HRIS. Goel says it’s usually ready to use in two to four weeks, with customers expanding into new use cases like sales performance management, headcount planning and what-if scenarios, planning and tracking modules.
In a prepared statement, Priya Mohan, partner at Venture Highway, said, “We struggled to develop Excel spreadsheets for portfolio companies to forecast revenue growth, structure go-to-market plans, and understand the drivers that impact revenue and equity growth. Spreadsheets and existing tools cannot do this in real time. Drivetrain’s scientific approach resonated with us predictably to expand business.
