Account Based Sales Development (ABSD) vendor Outreach closed on a $17.5 million Series B VC round led by Trinity Ventures.  Also participating were Microsoft Ventures and previous investors.  The round raised the total funding for Outreach to $29 million.  Trinity General Partner Karan Mehandru was named to the Outreach Board.

“Outreach has developed a platform that actually helps salespeople close deals, not just add another reporting layer for management. It is a platform of action, an operating system for sales, that prompts sales professionals to be the best version of themselves by automating their entire workflow across channels,” said Mehandru. “There is nothing else like it. Outreach is truly pioneering the transformation of the sales tech stack and making heroes out of sales professionals.”

CEO Manuel Medina noted that many sales reps manage over fifty customers and prospects.  “What happens is that all this conversation with different people falls into the cracks,” he said. “Outreach creates a workflow where salespeople know what to do next and automates follow-up.”

The funds will be dedicated towards an expansion of their engineering  and marketing teams.  Outreach is looking to build out its automation and workflow tools for sales reps and add new analytics capabilities.  The firm’s current headcount of eighty will likely double over the next year.  Engineering will grow from twelve to twenty by the end of the year and then double again next year.

“The environment is very competitive, but this positions us well with a big cash war chest and the ability to bring in more engineers and double down in the parts where we’re strong, which is product and engineering,” said Medina.

Outreach currently supports Salesforce.com and has a Microsoft Dynamics connector in development.  The platform is shifting to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services for its cloud service.

Outreach, like several other ABSD vendors, recently launched a partner ecosystem to support prospecting and messaging.  Other partners include Datanyze and SendGrid.

Clients include Adobe, CenturyLink, Adroll, AppDynamics, and Zillow.