StormWind Secures $4 Million in Series Preferred Funding to Grow HD Video eLearning

PHOENIX, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- StormWind, an online IT and custom training company founded by industry pioneers, has reframed eLearning with its new approach to HD live and interactive video training. The company, founded by Tom Graunke and Corey Frank, has received a Series Preferred round of funding led by GSV Capital Corp in the amount of $4 million. GSV, managed by highly regarded education investor Michael Moe, has a portfolio including some of the largest brands in high-tech such as Twitter, Dropbox, and Facebook. Mr. Moe, a renound Wall Street investor and strategist, has pegged some of the biggest wins in education, such as the Apollo Group. StormWind will use the capital for technology development, expanding its IT Live course offerings, and to hire approximately 150 new team members over the next 18 months.

Also investing in this round is technology icon Tim Crown, who co-founded and built Insight.com from initial startup into a Fortune 500 company. Mr. Crown will join the company's board of directors. "StormWind has more potential to dominate the stodgy and boring training industry than I've seen in the last 15 years," said Mr. Crown. "I was drawn to StormWind because I think they have something every enterprise is desperate for in this economy. That being, a faster, more effective training alternative that produces better results for significantly less cost."

StormWind was founded in 2009 by corporate training entrepreneur Tom Graunke, and IT veteran Corey Frank. In additional to KnowledgeNet, which was acquired by Thomson Reuters, Graunke also founded Mastering Computers. Frank and Graunke believed that most available corporate training programs were void of true engagement between instructors and students, and so the two set out to change the standard of live and online learning. Working with clients such as the US Navy, Budweiser, Cisco, PF Changs, Sony, and Avnet, StormWind's offerings consistently train over forty thousand students per month. Using their own proprietary technology, movie-quality delivery, and industry expertise, StormWind gives students an exciting, interactive, live and self-paced experience at half of the cost and time of traditional methods.

"ELearning 1.0 has been a complete and utter failure. It's boring and painful to take," said Mr. Graunke. "Our one simple goal is to bring back the one-on-one engagement of great classroom learning with the cost effective pricing of eLearning 1.0. I'm proud to say we are already achieving that goal with current clients. This significant investment allows us to expand faster and save more students and professionals from the bland, tired ways they are utilizing today." 

StormWind provides two eLearning options to their clients. Companies can hire StormWind to create custom HD eLearning for sales training, channel marketing, and employee education. Additionally, StormWind offers a next generation, HD online class experience for IT professionals looking for technical and certification training in topics like Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and Project Management.

For more information on StormWind visit www.stormwindlive.com

About StormWind

StormWind is a Phoenix, AZ based company that brings live, interactive, HD video production to the world of eLearning. Using their proprietary technology, StormWind delivers interactive training that creates a truly personal and engaging classroom experience to achieve real knowledge transfer. StormWind uses cutting edge technology to provide custom HD online video training for enterprise clients for sales training, channel marketing and employee education. For more information, go to www.stormwind.com.

Helpful Links:

www.facebook.com/stormwindsocial

https://twitter.com/StormWindSocial

http://stormwindlive.com/blog

SOURCE StormWind