What it is WorkRamp is a business training platform that helps employees become better at their jobs.

What it does New hires who use old learning methods and software take eight to twelve months on average to become fully productive. WorkRamp’s new training platform shortens that time by 50%.

WorkRamp lets new hires and current employees train for their jobs autonomously. Managers create customized training guides tailored to specific roles. For instance, a salesperson can learn to use the company’s sales tools, shadow calls with senior sales people, and get certified in sales pitches entirely through the system.

WorkRamp removes layers of complexity for trainers, trainees, and managers. Its collaboration tools let managers directly overlook and coach a trainee, which creates a more effective training experience.

What problem is it solving? Companies buy Learning Management Software (LMS) to meet their training requirements. These systems are often used for all forms of onboarding but were originally built for delivering generic HR training around policies, procedures, and corporate history.

As a result, current training models have had to conform to traditional LMSs’ static functionality. A recent study reveal more than 26% of trainers surveyed said they are dissatisfied with their current software.

WorkRamp reimagines the training process by starting with the employee. Managers using WorkRamp can create customized workflows that help their employees dive into their day-to-day responsibilities.

Companies spend an average of $1200/year per employee for corporate training and WorkRamp believes it can help companies see better ROI.

Why now? More than 88 million millennials, people ages 18 to 34, reside in the United States, making them the largest labor force. This generation holds higher expectations for their job training and switches jobs twice as often.

To meet these expectations, companies will have to invest in more efficient hiring and onboarding software. WorkRamp hopes to capitalize on this change in demographics by providing an experience that is much more engaging than traditional LMSs.

What’s next? WorkRamp started with a strong focus on onboarding and training sales teams. Given WorkRamp’s effectiveness, companies have already started to use this platform in other departments like customer support and engineering.

With US companies spending over $165 billion a year on training and development, WorkRamp plans to be the go-to business training platform for any topic.

What are some of the challenges WorkRamp will face? WorkRamp will face an uphill battle displacing the LMSs that many managers have gotten use to over the last two decades. However, their strategy is simple — by building a new class of software focused on role-specific training, WorkRamp believes its platform will spread from one team to another until it’s the standard training platform with an enterprise.

What YC liked about WorkRamp:

“Most larger startups we know don’t use an LMS at all, which is an indicator of the way the world is going. Workramp got customers that weren’t even considering an LMS, they were using spreadsheets and email because the software they wanted didn’t exist.” – Jared Friedman, Partner, Y Combinator

About the founders: Arshdeep, 29, was the Director of Engineering at SpoonRocket before he started WorkRamp. Previously, he lead the messaging infrastructure team at Box. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

Ted, 31, has built and sold enterprise SaaS software at Cisco and Box before he started WorkRamp. He currently focuses on sales and product. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Santa Clara.