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Sales-oriented professional networking startup raised $26 million in aled Series B round, the company said Thursday.

Bravado is a community for sales professionals to find jobs, get training and receive support from their peers to grow in their careers. The idea for the company came from CEO 鈥檚 own experience entering the world of B2B sales after working in politics.

Mansuri worked on 鈥檚 campaign from 2006 to 2009, phone banking, having conversations with voters, and amplifying the message of the campaign.听

His skills translated well to B2B sales, but instead of convincing someone to vote for a candidate, it was to buy software. But Mansuri noticed there wasn鈥檛 as much training for sales professionals to know their product and be subject-matter experts.

鈥淲alking into sales, I was so surprised,鈥� Mansuri said. 鈥淲hy isn鈥檛 there a ton of training about best practices in the industry? Why isn鈥檛 there a community to support the work being done here?鈥�

Sales is a critical function of any B2B tech company, though it tends to have a high turnover rate and low success rate, Mansuri said, pointing to the stat that the average tenure for a B2B sales representative is 11 months. There are other industry-focused professional networks, like for health care professionals or for developers, but Mansuri didn鈥檛 know of one for sales.

鈥淵ou either become quite wealthy because you鈥檙e really good, or you end up fired,鈥� Mansuri said.

So Mansuri built Bravado as a way for sales professionals to level up in their own careers and elevate the sales profession. Sales people can get advice, discuss compensation, and learn to develop their craft.听

Bravado has launched three products so far: War Room, Portfolio and Jobs. Since launching its jobs marketplace in late 2021, the company鈥檚 grown its annual recurring revenue from its first paid product to $4 million in seven months. Bravado鈥檚 War Room, where sales people can talk in a pseudonymous environment, has grown from 10,000 members in January 2021 to more than 200,000.

The company plans to use the funding to continue to build out the jobs marketplace, get more top-tier employers onto the network, and help sales professionals on the platform get trained up through features like certification programs, mentorship programs and other career development tools. Additionally, Bravado announced its first acquisition鈥搕he tech sales compensation data platform .听

鈥淪ales is an amazing gateway into many other professions even if it鈥檚 not the thing that you do for the rest of your life,鈥� Mansuri said.

Illustration: Dom Guzman