Mindflash kills the training coordinator for small to mid-size businesses

Mindflash, which provides a web-based application for training programs, announced today it is coming out of closed beta with a subscription-based pricing model geared toward smaller business that is several times cheaper than most firms offering training infrastructure for larger corporations.

Mindflash allows trainers and company executives to upload content ranging from films, quizzes, PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents and more into a web-based Adobe Flash application. Administrators of the application can get real-time feedback — such as quiz grades or how many people have viewed a training program.

The average company that uses the Mindflash technology has around 50 employees per company, said Donna Wells, CEO of Mindflash. Larger companies that provide training infrastructure can pay upwards of $200,000 to set up the systems before maintenance costs.

Mindflash offers tiered subscription models for companies with more than 20, 75 and 250 employees — ranging from $79 a month to $400 a month, depending on how many employees are using the service. For companies that have less than 10 employees, the service is actually free — though Wells said she hopes it encourages them to upgrade to a subscription service.

Investment Group of Santa Barbara, a private venture capital firm that “doesn’t like all the publicity,” is the primary backer of Mindflash — providing somewhere around the $5 million to $15 million range in two rounds of funding, though Wells wouldn’t specify.

“Our funding comes from the most successful VC group in California that no one’s ever heard of, and they really like it that way,” Wells said.

Some companies like Google and Salesforce.com have already shown interest in integrating their talent management applications with Mindflash’s technology, Wells said. But it would be at least until the first quarter of next year before Mindflash users see any kind of third-party app integration with the main product, she said.

“Google Marketplace has been after us before we launched in private beta for their platform,” she said. “We’ve been fielding unsolicited calls from a bunch of guys saying ‘hey your solution is better than what we have now, let’s talk about plugging you guys in.'”

The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company has about 25 employees total — though about half of them are headed to Palo Alto sometime this week. The other half of the employees work remotely, with people in Arizona and the rest of the country. Mindflash launched its private beta in April.