Harvard Innovation Labs Companies – i-lab – RallyPoint – 31/43

RallyPoint

RallyPoint was founded in 2012 by two military veterans at Harvard Business School to help make military life better. Backed by two of the US military’s recent Joint Chiefs of Staff, RallyPoint connects its members and gives them the best tools possible to succeed both while in the military, and beyond.

Website

https://www.rallypoint.com/

Team News

• RallyPoint Networks, a LinkedIn for Military Vets, Adds $5M

RallyPoint Networks, an online professional networking service for current and former members of the military, has raised $5 million from investors, a new SEC filing shows.

The Watertown, MA-based startup has now raised just shy of $12 million since it was founded in 2012, according to SEC documents. Its investors include DBL Investors, an early investor in Tesla and Pandora.

RallyPoint is like LinkedIn for U.S. military personnel. (In fact, it added LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke to its board in February.) RallyPoint’s users can connect with other current and former members of the military, build out their professional networks, and scout for potential jobs both in the military and the private sector.

RallyPoint was founded by two veterans while studying at Harvard Business School, and the company was incubated at the Harvard Innovation Lab. It won $100,000 in the MassChallenge accelerator program in 2012.

Since then, RallyPoint has amassed more than 500,000 members, or about 10 percent of the U.S. military, the company said earlier this year.

RallyPoint employs 17 people, according to its website. It will use the new money to hire engineering and sales people, co-founder and CEO Yinon Weiss told the Boston Business Journal.

RallyPoint’s rise comes amid an increased emphasis nationwide on helping military veterans re-enter the work force, including by nurturing entrepreneurship among them. Such initiatives include Chicago-based nonprofit Bunker Labs, which recently opened its 11th business accelerator program for veterans, and New York University’s veteran entrepreneur training program.