Online Career Site Receives $7 Million Angel Investment

“Pretend to have self-confidence you don’t yet feel.”

It was April 2013, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, was addressing an audience of women at an event hosted by Levo League, an online early career forum that Ms. Sandberg has supported since it was formed two years ago. Ms. Sandberg contributed to the company’s initial $1.25 million seed funding, and a video of her speech was among the first presentations on the site.

On Tuesday, Levo, which aims to help young people in the early stages of their careers through online mentorship, presentations and community-building, announced it had raised $7 million through a new round of angel investment. Caroline Ghosn, Levo’s chief executive and one of its co-founders, declined to say whether Ms. Sandberg participated in the latest funding round. Investors included Lubna Olayan, the chief executive of the Olayan Financing Company of Saudi Arabia, and Veronique Morali, the president of Fimalac Development in France, according to a press release.

The new capital will go toward reaching a larger audience around the world, expanding the site’s mobile offerings and personalizing the individual member experience. Levo did not disclose how many members it has but says it attracts an engaged audience of eight million to its various “office hours videos.”

Those videos feature presentations from prominent executives like Ms. Sandberg, and members can ask questions of the various mentors who make themselves available through the site’s public and private forums. Presenters have included the fashion designer Nanette Lepore and the journalist Soledad O’Brien.

Ms. Ghosn’s 53-minute chat with Warren Buffett drew 7.6 million viewers in May, the site’s record, she said.

Membership is free, and Levo â€" pronounced “LAY-voh,” from the Latin word meaning “to elevate” â€" makes money by charging companies that it helps with recruitment and retention efforts.

Ms. Ghosn said that Levo’s goal was to help young women obtain the skills they need to meet the demands of the work force. That includes content geared toward everything from confidence-building to learning the best way to ask for a raise. While most of Levo’s mentors and presentations are from women, it is not exclusively for women.

“The reason we focused on women first and foremost is because if you look at the research, the largest disconnect between performance and potential exists with Generation Y women,” Ms. Ghosn said.

Ms. Ghosn, a 27-year-old Stanford graduate and the daughter of Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Nissan and Renault, said she came up for the idea for Levo after spending nearly three years at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company in New York.

“I got to experience firsthand the lack of resources available to young talent in their first few years of work,” she said.

She was introduced to another McKinsey alumna, Ms. Sandberg, to pitch her vision for a site that could use technology to help young people advance in the early stages of their careers. Ms. Sandberg, an outspoken advocate for women in the executive suites, was in many ways a natural choice. Her speech for Levo was part of a tour for her 2013 book “Lean In,” which addresses mentorship, leadership and how women advocate for themselves in the workplace.

Ms. Ghosn’s experience approaching Ms. Sandberg mirrored some of Levo’s larger goals.

“I can’t even begin to describe how I felt before picking up the phone,” Ms. Ghosn said. “It was just akin to feeling like you’re about to have the conversation of your life and you need to put everything you can into it.”