CEO Spotlight Series: Exclusive Interview with Omer Glass, CEO of Growthspace
Omer, thanks for sitting down with me. Let’s jump into the interview. To start, after six years in management consulting, what prompted you to start Growthspace? What opportunity did you see in the market?
I received a call from one of my co-founders, Dan Terner, who was working as a COO at a growing company. They had been facing high employee attrition for six months and discovered that employees were leaving due to a lack of investment in their development. Despite bringing in various learning and development solutions, they saw no improvement in key metrics like attrition and performance. Dan reached out to me because of my experience in the field and asked, “How can we drive effective employee development?” My honest response was, “No one really knows.” That’s when we decided to create a solution that would provide effective employee development for companies.
Let’s dig into the offering. There is a wide range of coaching and skills development solutions in the market. How is Growthspace different? What is the unique value proposition to a customer?
Imagine a tech CEO who needs to deliver a keynote but lacks confidence. You’d probably recommend pairing them with an expert in that specific area, like a TED Talks trainer, to help them prepare. That’s exactly what we do, but on a large scale: precision skill development. Another way to think about it is that companies invest a lot of energy in identifying their skill gaps, but then struggle to bridge them. Growthspace is the most effective bridge out there.
At a very high level, our platform leverages our proprietary taxonomy to (a) identify an employee’s skills, gaps, and needs; (b) match that employee with an expert who specializes in the skill the employee needs to develop; then (c) facilitate a personalized, live upskilling “sprint” on our platform.
So, how are we different? Three words: precision, personalization, and scale.
Precision: You mentioned coaching. While coaching solutions are great at providing coaching, they often lack precision for skill development. For instance, would the CEO from the example above prefer a generic coach or a TED Talks trainer? Effective development requires experts (versus coaches) who specialize in the specific skills needed and understand the industry/functional context of the participant. A lot of our experts have an ICF coaching certification, which is great, but it’s not what makes the cut. If the day job of an expert is to teach management, and they served as a manager, they are more equipped to teach management than an ICF-certified coach who does life coaching. Our deep roster of experts, with expertise across functions, is well equipped to provide precise training and coaching efficiently and effectively. Our platform ensures the employee is matched with the expert that best aligns with a variety of variables, such as job function, industry, level, and most importantly, skill. This ensures the expert can get to the core development objective early and then provide the employee with the right training and guidance to efficiently improve performance.
Personalization: There are many e-learning platforms out there that can provide a lot of content on a lot of topics. However, content alone tends to be less effective because it’s not personalized or tailored to the specific needs of the participant. Will the CEO from the example above learn how to deliver a keynote from YouTube, or would they prefer someone who can understand their specific style and unique challenges? Unlike many training companies, our offering starts understanding the business challenge with the help of the employee and the direct manager. Using AI, and one of the deepest skills taxonomies in the industry, our platform helps translate the business challenge to a skill (with phenomenal accuracy). When you ask a manager what the challenge of their employee is, they will speak in business terms, not skills. They will say, “My employee talks too much,” and not, “My employee needs to improve their active listening skills,” and then the appropriate training follows. Our commitment to understanding the profile and needs of each learner unlocks a highly personalized approach to learning, with the right expert equipping each employee with the necessary skill development, based on a variety of variables.
Scale: There are many training and development service providers out there that can help build skills, but how do you do that for thousands of people across dozens of countries at the same time? Growthspace’s AI-powered technology enables customers to launch complex talent development programs globally, whether it’s 1:1 development, team coaching, workshops, or internal mentoring. Our ability to match, with precision, provides immense learning efficiencies for both the enterprise and learner, creating a highly scalable yet impact offering, which has helped us drive significant value for our customers.
Many learning players take a programmatic approach to learning, with preconfigured content delivery or a planned coaching/live workshop cadence. Growthspace’s offering is more reactive, precise, and “just in time.” Can you talk a little bit about how your approach creates long-term value for a customer and drives customer retention?
Our platform supports both programmatic and reactive approaches. For example, PayPal uses Growthspace for new manager training. After six weeks of classroom leadership training, each manager completes a five-session 1:1 sprint with a Growthspace expert on the skill gaps they need to address individually—this is programmatic.
Other customers use us more reactively through HRBPs or managers for specific needs. For instance, if a team in their department needs some training on cross-cultural communications, the HRBP can launch an “off-the-shelf” workshop. If a manager struggles with delegation, they can easily be assigned a 1:1 sprint. If a team has collaboration challenges, we offer a team sprint.
Building on the above, what are the most common use cases? How does your relationship with a customer evolve over time?
Most customers begin with manager/leadership development programs, ranging from new managers to VP-level programs. From there, we often see succession-based training, such as high-potential women in leadership, or DEI/ERG programs. We also support function-based programs, like improving service scores for a major vehicle brand or driving branch revenues for a large food and retail group. Eventually, companies like Siemens expand the use to larger populations, applying it based on specific needs.
How does Growthspace help a customer (a) frame and (b) track return on investment (ROI)? Traditionally, this concept has been difficult to prove in the skills development space.
To measure impact, we focus on sprints—usually three sessions for workshops and five for 1:1 development. We assess ROI on three levels:
- Employee Level: The platform assesses whether the employee achieved the desired skill improvement. While this may involve some bias, it still serves as a valuable quality indicator.
- Direct Manager Level: Managers typically set the sprint goals and provide feedback, offering a more objective perspective that serves as a strong indicator of success.
- Functional/Business Metric: We track metrics that matter to the organization, like customer service scores or manager effectiveness, and measure changes before and after the sprint, or by comparing a test group to a control group. This allows us to evaluate both skill development and business impact.
Data represents a key component of the story. How do your data capabilities elevate the offering and improve the customer experience over time?
Just like you rely on reviews to choose a hotel on Booking.com (I personally will not book a hotel if it’s below 8/10), we use data to identify the highest-rated experts for the job. The more data we gather, the better we can predict successful matches. Additionally, program data helps us understand what works, enabling the platform to recommend programs that have proven successful for similar customers.
Looking ahead, what are you most excited about?
Growth! If you told me five years ago that we’d be working with some of the largest companies in the world, helping them develop their most valuable assets—their employees—I’d have thought you were being overly optimistic. But here we are, leading the way in this space, and it’s exciting to see how well it’s being received by both existing and new customers. AI is another exciting area. Much of our technology is AI-based, from identifying skill gaps to matching and delivering high-quality skill development sprints. The combination of human expertise and AI is elevating the quality and effectiveness of our solutions.