A woman-owned firm in the shadow of Detroit's auto plants built its business on a blunt premise: most leadership training doesn't stick. Here is how Droste Group tries to make it stick anyway.
OpenSesame is a Portland, Oregon-based e-learning company that runs an online marketplace of curated corporate training courses. Founded in 2011, it aggregates content from hundreds of publishers into a single catalog of tens of thousands of courses spanning business skills, compliance, safety, leadership, technology and wellness, and integrates that content directly into a customer's existing learning management system. The company sells to enterprise and mid-market employers who want to buy, curate and deliver workforce training without stitching together dozens of separate vendors.
Hone is a San Diego-area software company that delivers leadership and human-skills training to enterprises through small-group, live virtual classes led by expert facilitators, paired with program-management technology and, since 2025, a voice-first AI coach called Hone AI. Founded in 2018 by FanDuel co-founder Tom Griffiths and former CultureIQ leaders, Hone helps companies deploy, manage, and measure manager, leadership, and DEIB training at scale for distributed and hybrid teams. It has trained more than 50,000 people for customers including IBM, Rubrik, Thumbtack, and Rover.