DETROIT – Gamification and CRM solutions company LevelEleven, one of the dozens of properties houses in the Madison Building owned by Detroit Venture Partners, has landed another $500,000 in seed financing that includes an undisclosed amount from long-time Michigan technology entrepreneur Rick Inatome.

Inatome, a long time mentor to LevelEleven CEO Bob Marsh, was joined by Hyde Park Venture Partners, and the First Step Fund. DVP also was involved as it was in October 2012 when LevelEleven announced a $1 million initial seed round. Marsh said the new financing will be used to help further accelerate product development as well as beefing up sales and marketing.

One key new hire is Chris Bland, what Marsh called a specialized engineer. Bland was employee No. 76 at Groupon, another company built on the SalesForce.Com platform. LevelEleven creates a pseudo-competition among sales people to motive them to make more sales.

?Chris saw it as an chance to create another industry,? Marsh said. ?He?s still based in Chicago, but travels here multiple times each month to be with us in the Madison Building. There?s a tremendous amount of energy here.?

LevelEleven now has nine employees on staff, and has almost tripled their customer base from 25 to more than 70 clients within the past six months. Clients include Comcast, Dyn Concur, Delta Airlines, OpenTable and Kelly Services.

?LevelEleven has experienced significant success since its launch last year and I believe the company is in a great position to capitalize on the growth of the enterprise gamification industry,? said Rick Inatome, who currently serves as the CEO of InfiLaw Corporation, a national consortium of independent law schools. Rick is also a well-known computer industry pioneer who co-founded two multi-billion dollar companies, including Computer City and Inacomp Computer Centers.

?I share Bob?s philosophy that meaningful gamification is the key to motivating employees and believe that LevelEleven has tapped into an unmet market need that gives the company tremendous growth potential in the future.?

Inatome also said it is great to invest in someone he has known for a long time. Inatome said he has worked with and mentored Marsh for about 20 years. Inatome created one of Michigan?s first business incubators in Troy in the 1990s called Media Ventures. It was acquired in 2003 by Mentor Capital, which later was acquired by Sterling Partners.