Tag: PE/VC Investments

Lavender Series A

Lavender Insights

Lavender, which markets an AI-powered sales email coaching platform, closed an $11 million Series A, raising its total funding to $13.2 million.  Norwest Venture Partners led the round with participation from Signia Venture Partners.  The funding follows strong growth in 2022, with revenue rising 865%.

Funds will be deployed towards expanding its team and introducing “new AI-powered features that help revenue teams not just understand why their messaging is falling flat but also provide actionable coaching to improve productivity and generate faster responses.”

“Lavender’s new investment helps it build out a generative AI solution at the intersection of email marketing, sales enablement, and news and information,” wrote Outsell Lead Analyst Randy Giusto.  “It shows where sales and marketing intelligence vendors must head next.”

Lavender integrates with a user’s email workflow, helping reps improve response rates.  It also delivers prospect company and contact intelligence.  Lavender scores emails and recommends steps to improve response rates.  It also “coaches sales reps on how to build meaningful relationships and close more deals.” 

Along with raising response rates, email composition time is significantly reduced.  Lavender claims that rep time writing an email drops from fifteen minutes to one while raising email response rates fourfold to twenty percent or more.

“Using Lavender is like giving every seller on the team a dedicated coach, making them more effective, more efficient, and more confident in their job,” stated CEO William Ballance.  “This funding quickly accelerates our ability to build the best email experience for sellers around the world.  Most importantly, we’re creating new jobs as our team of #EmailWizards rapidly expands.”

The Lavender Team Dashboard

Lavender recommendations are initially based on “millions of successful sales emails and your historical emails.”  However, it continues to adjust recommendations based on “what works best for you.”

Lavender evaluates the subject and body to improve open rates.  It will identify subjects that are too long, not in title case, or contain numbers and punctuation.  For the body, it looks at the length, layout, spelling, and grammar.  For example, long sentences and paragraphs are difficult to read on mobile devices, so they are discouraged.  According to Lavender, 80% of buyers are viewing emails on their phone, “so making emails easily scannable on a mobile device is imperative.”  A mobile preview window displays the email as it would appear on phones.

“We recommend things across multiple categories, including formatting, phrasing, tonality and emotional intelligence, mobile optimization, personalization, and more,” explained Lavender COO Will Allred to GZ Consulting.  “The data is always shifting though, and as trends shift in sales emails/what works well for that user and/or their team, Lavender’s scoring and recommendations dynamically adjust accordingly.”

Other Lavender features include a coaching dashboard, AI for Sales emails, and a personalization assistant.  The coaching dashboard provides individual and team email scores, open rates, reply rates, and writing time.  It helps managers determine which reps require additional coaching, what is working, and why it is working.

Lavender includes a “Start my Email” function that employs generative AI to “draft impactful outgoing email messages” based on seed bullet points from the rep or as email responses based on the email thread. 

The generative AI is OEM’d from OpenAI & Cohere.

The personalization assistant displays recipient context to assist with personalization.  For example, lavender surfaces social data, personality insights, news, events, job listings, funding announcements, and other intelligence within the composition workflow.  Lavender AI also recommends “personalized intros to tailor your email and make it relevant to the recipient.”

Lavender is integrated with Gmail, Outlook, Outreach, and Salesloft.  Lavender Anywhere, a Chrome extension, supports email composition for HubSpot, LinkedIn, Groove, Apollo, Engage, Outplay, and Mailchimp.  As Lavender Anywhere is not directly integrated with these platforms, users must cut and paste the resulting text into the communication window.  Lavender Anywhere is available with Pro and Teams licenses.

“Lavender is delivering exceptional value to our customers.  Their integration provides real-time email assistance to help Salesloft customers build and deepen their relationships with prospects through better emails,” said Salesloft VP of Global Alliances Devin Schiffman.  “We share in the mission of helping sellers be loved by the buyers they serve.”

Customers include Twilio, Sharebite, Sendoso, Segment, Lucidworks, and Clari.  Allred said Lavender sells into a “large range” of companies, “but our sweet spot tends to be mid-market tech or tech-enabled companies.”

“Lavender is marketed toward ‘sales emails’ – but many things are a sale,” continued Allred.  “Our users use Lavender for B2B sales, recruiting, customer success, marketing, and many more.”

While output is English only, features such as the email generator or summary tools can ingest foreign language input.  Thus, Lavender “works great for ESL (English second language) selling into English speaking markets,” said Allred.

“Lavender’s platform goes beyond basic AI-generated writing to augment—rather than automate—sales outreach and humanize every interaction.  It supercharges sales reps by reducing their time spent writing emails so that they can focus on building relationships and selling products,” said Scott Beechuk, partner at Norwest Venture Partners.  “We were blown away by the ‘customer love’ for Lavender’s product, which is a testament to the founding team’s deep understanding of their end user and the tight-knit community of sales leaders it has already built.  We’re excited to partner with this team on the journey ahead.”

The firm has benefited from the recent interest in generative AI and ChatGPT.  “We were using GPT-3 long before ChatGPT was a thing, but ChatGPT has definitely increased interest in Generative AI more broadly.  Users have created UGC (user-generated content) of them using Lavender to edit ChatGPT–generated emails,” explained Allred.  “But before ChatGPT was released, thousands of users were already getting the benefit of it within Lavender.”

“We view the process of emailing as four parts: research, creation, editing, and learning,” continued Allred.  Lavender assists in all four.  Generative models can assist along the way to streamline things for our users.”

Lavender employs a freemium pricing model.

Lavender is sold on a freemium basis.  Free users receive email analysis and personalization for five emails per month. 

Reps can license an Individual Pro license for $29 per month that provides unlimited emails and recommendations.  In addition, the Pro service includes Lavender Anywhere, multi-inbox support, analytics, and Gmail and Outlook 365 integrations.

For $49 per user per month, companies can license a Team edition that includes Team AI coaching, Team Insights, a Manager’s Dashboard, and SEP integrations for Salesloft or Outreach. Lavender offers a seven-day free trial and free premium licenses for job seekers, students, and bootstrapped entrepreneurs.

Volaris Acquires ClickDimensions

ClickDimensions new SEP supports sequences and templates.

Private Equity company Volaris Group acquired SMB RevTech vendor ClickDimensions from PE firm Accel-KKR.  The acquisition comes two months after the firm launched a Sales Engagement Platform.

“We view this acquisition as a great opportunity for both Volaris and ClickDimensions to provide innovative solutions for the ever-evolving MarTech and sales enablement industries,” said Jay Hoffman, Group Leader at Volaris. “I’m eager to work alongside ClickDimensions’ leadership team to propel their strategy forward and continue to serve their global footprint of customers and partners.  We’re pleased to welcome ClickDimensions to the Volaris Group.”

ClickDimensions Marketing Automation supports email marketing, campaign automation, surveys, events, landing pages, forms, SMS, and Social.  While the company now offers marketing automation and sales engagement, its long-term plans are to provide a “full RevTech solution” built on the Dynamics platform.  This future platform and services organization will be built both organically and via acquisitions.  It will support embedded AI for sentiment analysis, next-best actions, opportunity scoring, and activity capture.

ClickDimensions is a Microsoft VAR and consultancy with a global footprint across 76 countries and 3,500 customers.  Its solutions integrate with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Sales.  Half of its revenue is derived in the EMEA region, with most of the rest in North America.  It serves a broad set of industries, with no segment representing over 25% of its customer base.

ClickDimensions also offers consultancy services that provide “fractional access to skilled resources that are in short supply.”  Services include onboarding, training, and execution; demand generation; customer data services; and marketing operations.

“With the strength and global scale of Volaris behind us, we envision a bright future for ClickDimensions and the customers and partners we serve,” stated Mike Dickerson, CEO at ClickDimensions. “We look forward to continuing development of our product suite and further solidifying our long-term commitment to the Microsoft ecosystem, innovation, and SMB market.”

ClickDimensions will continue as an independent organization. 

“Small to medium businesses are just as keen as large enterprises to acquire and build deep, loyal customer relationships, and ClickDimensions has put the capability to do so into the hands of thousands of companies worldwide,” said Rob Palumbo, Managing Partner at Accel-KKR, which invested in ClickDimensions in 2016.  “It has been gratifying to help ClickDimensions grow just as the company itself has helped thousands of small to medium businesses grow and expand.  We look forward to cheering ClickDimensions and Volaris from the sidelines.”

Live Data Series A

B2B DaaS vendor Live Data Technologies closed on a $5 million Series A led by Entrada Ventures with “further participation from firms and individuals with deep backgrounds in data tech.”  Previously, the firm was funded from revenue, but “we raised this round when we saw the opportunities made possible by overwhelming investor interest and support.”

“We have been behind Live Data Technologies since the company’s inception,” said Entrada Ventures Managing Partner and Live Data Technologies Board Member Jason Spievak.  “The core technology has multiple compelling applications across industries and verticals.  The accuracy and quality of job change event detection are mission critical to anyone making informed decisions.”

Live Data focuses on contact changes and ensuring accurate contacts in the CRM.  It maintains data on 70 million contacts and 2 million companies, capturing 30,000 daily job changes from the open web.  Live Data argues that mining this intelligence from the web ensures more timely contacts than traditional data collection methods.

Contact data changes support:

  • Tracking champions as they move to new companies.
  • Highlighting account risk when champions or buying committee members depart.
  • Detecting promotions that create opportunities for success stories, upsell opportunities, and case studies.

“Each go-to-market strategy requires essential ingredients working together like a great recipe.  But, even the most perfect strategy will fall short if the people you put your message in front of are no longer relevant, or you lack up-to-date contact records, to begin with,” blogged Director of Growth Jason Saltzman.  “The bottom line is that business decision-making is done at the human level, and up-to-date contact-level data is essential for successful go-to-market programs.”

The firm will continue refining its DaaS offering and improving its data set and delivery. “Our Series A represents a confirmation that we are building something valuable,” said CEO J. Scott Hamilton.  “We see it, our investors see it, and our customers see it.  With all this recognition comes a pressure to take Live Data to the next level – and, in our eyes, pressure is a privilege.”

Terminus Funding Round

Terminus Funding Summary (Source: Crunchbase).

According to Atlanta Inno, ABX Platform Terminus has completed all but $1.5 million of a $24 million raise.  The round was smaller than its $90 million March 2021 round.  Twenty-eight investors participated.

The round follows a May restructuring.  At the time, the staffing cuts were estimated at 15% of its workforce.

In total, the firm has raised $140 million.  It also closed on a $50 million debt facility with CIBC in Q4 2021 around the time it acquired CDP Zylotech.

The funding round has not been press released, and Terminus did not provide any comments to Atlanta Inno or GZ Consulting on the round.

Gartner recently named Terminus a Leader in its Q4 2022 Magic Quadrant for Account-Based Marketing Platforms.  Terminus offers a “full range of ABM capabilities, including “broad support for channels including display advertising, retargeting, social advertising, website personalization, website chat, and tracking for email with personalized dynamic signatures.”

Gartner called out Terminus’ “strong and broad native channel support that includes advertising (display, retargeting, video, connected TV, and audio), site personalization, chat, and email tracking.

Gartner also praised Terminus’ “industry-specific playbooks” that “help customers implement use cases such as brand awareness, pipeline building, and acceleration, retention, and expansion.”

Matchbook AI Funding

Matchbook AI, which offers External Data and Data Hygiene solutions to enterprise clients, has announced a $3 million seed extension.  It previously received $1.7 million in seed and friends and family funding.

Matchbook was founded in 2018 but operated as a garage project for a couple of years before being incorporated.  CEO Rushabh Mehta had the idea for the Matchbook Data Hub while an industry evangelist and initially built the solution with Dun & Bradstreet data.  The Data Hub provides a configurable, hierarchical matching service that matches and enriches records with a single API call.  Both batch and real-time matching are supported, with cascading and waterfall matching processes.  In addition, a rules engine allows customers to construct bespoke data cleansing and filtering rules specific to various business units and use cases.  The Data Hub will be powered by Snowflake.

The system can use other identifiers such as domains or emails if the account cannot be matched by name and address.  In addition, the system manages deduplication and prevents creating duplicate records when onboarding accounts. The solution can also support more complex matching scenarios to allow for verification checks and multi-attribute matching.

“I can immediately see if I already have an existing relationship with that account,” Mehta explained to GZ Consulting.  “Just because I keyed in the name incorrectly or a previous account had a different address for that same company, I should still be able to identify and say, ‘Hey, no, it’s the same company to the same account.’”

The Data Hub also manages information for enterprise clients with multiple CRMs, helping “provide that visibility across CRMs, across ERPs, or CRM and ERP.”  Thus, Matchbook can identify whether “there is already an existing relationship within the organization with that particular entity” through third-party identification.  Furthermore, matching identifies parent-sub relationships tied together by D-U-N-S numbers.

According to Mehta, customers want controlled updates to their CRM or ERP, not real-time updates.  They also want to control which fields are updated with the data hub keeping “everything mastered in one place” with the intelligence accessible to the organization.

Matchbook AI’s data partners and supported platforms

Along with Dun & Bradstreet’s data sets (e.g., companies, contacts, hierarchies, beneficial ownership, D-U-N-S identifiers, technographics, competitors, company news, and credit and supplier risk profiles), Matchbook AI provides third-party reference data from ZoomInfo, Demandbase, Moody’s, Experian, Melissa, and Google.  The service also includes sanctions and terrorist watchlist data for compliance use cases.

The Data Hub operates as a centralized external data repository for maintaining data quality and standardizing data across platforms, including Salesforce, Snowflake, SAP, Informatica, Microsoft, Oracle, Certa, and Reltio.  The Data Hub supports a broad set of processes and departments, with sales, marketing, finance, IT, logistics, compliance, legal, and supplier management use cases. It also plays a critical role in MDM use cases through integrations with Reltio and others.

Matchbook claims implementations between two days and two months, significantly faster than its competitors.  Furthermore, as a DaaS solution, it is 90% less expensive than in-house solutions.  It also claims a 75% savings on expenses related to maintaining a data stewardship team due to “improved data quality and automated management.”

VP of Sales & Marketing Wesley Billingslea described a recent dinner with a Fortune 500 CIO who described Matchbook AI as “quite strategic and pervasive because we go across departments,” whereas “most MDM projects sit in the IT organization.”  This approach “empowers” teams across the organization with superior data and a plug-and-play solution.

Matchbook focuses on enterprise clients, with 59% of its customers in the Fortune 500.  It takes a land-and-expand approach that proves itself in one department or on one platform and then extends to others.  Contracts are usually written for a single year and then converted to multi-year contracts a year later.  The strategy has resulted in a 118% net retention rate and a projected ARR increase of 220% this year.

“As we gear up our sales and marketing efforts, we are confident that we will soon achieve $3.5 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with Current ARR of $1.85 million,” said Mehta.  “Data should be trusted, enriched, and always ready.  I feel very confident in our approach as we take these next steps and help companies understand their data DNA in this age of intelligent business.”

Matchbook claims an impressive LTV/CAC ratio greater than 12, an important indicator of stickiness, value, and an efficient go-to-market approach.

Mehta noted that it is just entering a large market with a rapidly expanding TAM.  According to MarketsandMarkets, data cleansing and global master data management were an $11.3 billion market in 2020, growing to $27.9 billion by 2025 (19.8% CAGR).

“Our value proposition to an MDM implementation can mean the difference between success and failure,” said Mehta.

Pricing is based on a records-under-management model, providing a predictable budget line to companies.  Implementations range from 50,000 to 100 million records. Matchbook has grown to 51 employees in the Americas and Asia.  The bulk of its R&D is conducted in Asia.

Crunchbase Series D

Crunchbase reporting on its funding rounds in Crunchbase Pro.

Funding intelligence vendor Crunchbase closed on a $50 million Series D led by Alignment Growth, with OMERS Ventures, Mayfield, and Emergence Capital also participating.  The oversubscribed round raised total funding to $106.5 million.

“Investors we spoke with echoed the trends we’re seeing in Crunchbase data: We are in the middle of one of the most challenging times for startups to raise,” blogged Crunchbase CEO Jager McConnell.  “So, the fact that we had more firms trying to invest in us than we were even looking for is a huge vote of confidence in our company, brand, and the products we’ve built.”

Jager noted that the firm has moved beyond funding data for PE and VC firms to a broader information platform that supports sales, recruiting, finance, and business development professionals.  I would add Competitive and Market Intelligence professionals to their user list as I regularly use Crunchbase and Owler for deal intelligence.

Crunchbase began as a funding database at TechCrunch but was spun out as an independent organization in 2015 and has evolved into a sales intelligence service.  The Crunchbase Pro offering supports company discovery, qualification, tracking, Salesforce syncing, and engagement (via contact data and email templates) at a low price ($49 per month billed annually).

Crunchbase Pro Build-a-List

“As difficult economic conditions impact more companies, knowing whether a target account is on the upswing or not gives prospectors the power to focus outreach on decision-makers with buying power,” McConnell said.  “Our tools encourage account-based selling, which encourages deal-makers to prioritize their prospecting efforts based on the companies they should be contacting rather than the individuals.  This is the opposite approach to ‘spray and pray,’ which relies on massive contact lists and leads to the kind of spammy outreach that no one likes.”

Recent enhancements include territory filters, diversity flags, machine-learning company recommendations, a Chrome extension, and email alerts for priority accounts, lists, and saved searches.  They also added a contacts database and email templates.

Crunchbase has retained its focus on emerging (funded) companies.  This focus is both an advantage and disadvantage.  Emerging companies are often the fastest growing businesses with expanding needs and fewer incumbent vendors that need to be displaced.  They are also more open to cutting-edge technology, encourage quick decision-making, and are less risk averse.  Conversely, they represent a relatively small percentage of the overall economy, deals are smaller (but with significant upside at renewal), and they are more subject to economic volatility.

Another advantage of focusing on emerging companies is that the leading sales intelligence databases have weak coverage of these firms.  When companies collect or ingest data on global companies of all sizes, they lack the editorial bandwidth to deliver detailed information on emerging companies.  Specialist databases such as Crunchbase offer funding details, acquisition histories, editorially-written business descriptions, and more accurate sizing data.

“The Crunchbase SaaS platform combines rich and proprietary company data with direct access to decision-makers within a single intuitive interface—at compelling price points—making it a powerful tool for driving ROI across a variety of use cases, from sales to recruiting and more,” stated new Crunchbase Board member Alex Iosilevich from Alignment Growth.  “We expect that Crunchbase will continue to gain accelerated industry adoption and are excited to support the company’s growth momentum alongside strong participation from the existing investor group.”

Crunchbase continues to grow its product and data.  It supports 75 million unique annual users and over 60,000 customers.  Furthermore, SaaS products drove a 5x year-over-year increase in new recurring revenue in Q1 2022.

“We took a step back from rapid growth in favor of a more measured, balanced approach,” stated McConnell, who noted that the firm has focused on capital-efficient growth.  The firm dialed back its Burn Multiple from 3 ($3 spent to acquire $1 in new ARR) in 2019 to 0.22 in H1.

“The recent onslaught of down rounds and mass layoffs from companies who very recently hit unicorn status shows how outsized burn rates can be hidden behind oversized funding rounds, covering up the reality of weak business fundamentals,” McConnell said.  “I’m especially proud of the fact that we have been able to generate growth while keeping our burn rate in check.  In the first half of this year, we drove $9 million net new ARR at only $2 million burn — that’s best in class according to Bessemer’s efficiency benchmarks and puts us on the path to profitability…We plan to double our business-to-business software ARR this year, ending around $38 million in ARR just for this customer segment.”

Iosilevech argued that Crunchbase is well-positioned for ongoing growth and does not expect follow-on rounds.  “They’re managing the business in a capital-efficient way so that the capital that they raise will really be the last round they need before a major milestone in the company’s history, whether it’s an IPO or something else.”

Funds will be deployed towards additional headcount and expanding platform functionality, beginning with a HubSpot connector.  The firm is also looking to expand its machine-learning recommendations for sales, expand its data insights, and add usage tracking dashboards “to help customers track efficacy of activities on Crunchbase, along with the number of opportunities and ARR available to them.”

Crunchbase has grown to 220 employees with a remote-first operational model.  It added seventy staff during the first half of the year and is aiming to add another fifty-five employees before year’s end.  It was cash flow positive in Q1.

Crunchbase did not disclose its new valuation figures.

Saleo Early-Stage Funding Round for Live Demos

Recently founded demo experience software company Saleo received $1.5 million in early-stage investment for its live demo platform.  Funding came from Tech Square Ventures, Jon Hallett, Kyle Porter, Rob Forman, Tim Kopp, John Hanger, Bryan Wade, and Eric Spett.  The firm is based in Atlanta, as are most of the investors.

Justin McDonald and Daniel Hellerman, experienced RevTech execs who previously worked at Terminus (three of the investors are Terminus executives), founded Saleo.  In addition, McDonald launched Ramble Chat which he subsequently sold to Terminus.

“We believe that every software company should have the means to deliver the perfect software demo that ‘wows’ their buyers every time.  No more missing data, hours of prep time, or sub-par generic demos,” posted McDonald on LinkedIn.

Saleo enables real-time customization of demo environments and supports collaboration among revenue teams during the demo creation process.  As a result, Saleo helps revenue teams “shorten their sales cycle, increase win rates, and close more deals by removing the burden of missing data, outdated demo environments, and time-consuming demo prep.”

Saleo supports a demo library that can be personalized by industry, company, use case, and job function.  Successful demos can be shared as a template or cloned and customized.  In addition, Saleo provides revenue teams with complete control over the demo environment, including graphs, metrics, tables, text, and images, “enabling you to create the perfect software demo that connects directly to your customer’s pain points and lands exactly the way you want.”

“We’re the only technology that allows software companies to manipulate and customize their live demo environment. Other players breaking in are taking screenshots of existing applications and making changes to them.”

Saleo CEO Justin McDonald

Saleo has a no-code integration that runs with any browser-based SaaS app via a Chrome extension that connects to their SaaS platform.  Time-based metrics are always current.  Furthermore, Saleo doesn’t operate as a screen capture service but demos the firm’s live SaaS product without requiring any embedded code.

“Saleo represents one of those very rare early-stage companies that is launched with such a compelling combination of team, vision, product, and market potential.  Saleo’s customers have been blown away by the impact on sales conversion.” said Jon Hallett of Hallett Capital.  “I was stunned when I saw how easy it was to use and the potential sales impact it represents for future customers.  Of all the new companies I have seen this year, this one has me the most excited.”

“SaaS companies have always struggled to deliver great software demos – either in the time investment to prepare a sales demonstration, or the myriad of challenges around missing data or how to customize a demo for different buyers,” said Salesloft CEO Kyle Porter.  “Saleo has created an ingenious solution to help sales engineers and account executives demo their software apps like never before, and most importantly, increase their win rates.  I am excited to be a part of it.”

Saleo currently has four remote employees and is looking at office space. It plans to expand to twelve headcount by the end of the year, with hires in engineering, sales and customer services. It expects to close a seed funding round in the next six months and sign forty customers before the end of the year.

Terminus was signed as Saleo’s first customer.

RevenueBase $6M Seed Round

B2B data vendor RevenueBase closed a $6 million seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.  Additional investors include 2 Lanterns, Argon Ventures, Converge, Feldsmith Capital, Good Friends, Graph Ventures, Gutbrain Ventures, KOA Labs, PBJ Capital, and Service Provider Capital.  The round was oversubscribed as RevenueBase enjoyed significant investor interest.

As part of the round, RevenueBase named three Directors to its Board:

  • Kent Bennett, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners
  • Bob Davoli, Founder and Managing Director of GutBrain
  • Jude McColgan, former CEO of Localytics

RevenueBase launched last spring looking to solve issues in the B2B data market, including difficulty in identifying and engaging with Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) prospects and marketing’s reliance upon spammy demand generation instead of well-targeted messages.  RevenueBase trebled its revenue over the past year and expects to do the same this year.  It has already onboarded twenty customers, with a focus on selling data as a strategic asset to the CMO or CRO.

RevenueBase was founded by industry veterans Mark Feldman, the VP of Marketing at NetProspex before its acquisition by Dun & Bradstreet, and Milenko Beslic, who built Cheapflights, the travel industry’s first metasearch engine.  As a marketing head at Backupify, Motion Recruitment, and Localytics, Feldman became frustrated with B2B data issues, including misalignment with the sales and marketing team’s go-to-market strategy, data decay, difficulty acquiring data, and managing disparate vendors and formats.  His stint as a B2B data customer led him to return to the B2B data space and create a product that broadly aggregates company, contact, and custom customer-specific insight data that aligns 1:1 with each customers’ go-to-market strategies.

Custom insights can be any variable that enables targeting of the right businesses.  For example,

  • Does the company offer a mobile app?
  • Are they a managed service provider?
  • Do they have a call center?
  • Do they sell perishable food products?

RevenueBase then builds a custom database for clients that it calls a Revenue Database, which is updated on an ongoing basis.

“We saw a whitespace for a company like RevenueBase, especially given that we’ve seen little real innovation or change in this market over the past decade leading businesspeople to be bombarded with impersonal and poorly targeted messages multiple times a day.  This situation has been made worse by ‘The Great Resignation,’ during which so many people have left their positions, and the data hasn’t kept up with those changes. Milenko and I knew that we could build a better solution to make it easier for companies to access more buyers in order to increase revenue.  We’re excited to have the support of great investors who are on board with our vision.”

CEO Mark Feldman

RevenueBase will deploy its funds towards building a customer UX and a set of enterprise software integrations for CRMs and MAPs.  It is also looking to grow its headcount from twelve to twenty before the end of the year.

“We think the opportunity to be the B2B data refinement layer powering growth-oriented companies is massive,” said Bennett.  “We are impressed with RevenueBase’s early traction and Mark’s and Milenko’s appetite to transform the B2B data industry.” 

Feldman argues that RevenueBase is distinguished across three dimensions: “completeness of data, data accuracy at scale, and ease.”  RevenueBase offers a high-touch, white-glove offering customized to each of its clients.  It begins with customer alignment, holding a set of discovery workshops that identify each customer’s “revenue archetype.”  RevenueBase then queries its 700 million global contacts database to build tailored databases for its clients.

RevenueBase maintains a database of 700 million global contacts.

Revenue Archetypes consist of an ICP, market segmentation, pains addressed, buyer personas, sales showstoppers, and custom insights that enable buyers to be engaged more personally. 

“A revenue archetype is a model of what your ideal customer looks like, i.e., one you can derive revenue from,” Feldman explained to GZ Consulting.  “It’s where there is a mutual benefit.  They need your product/service and will pay a fair price for it.  They also will favor you over the competition because your solution will result in the best cost-benefit tradeoff for the customer.“

Conversely, the Revenue Archetype also defines companies that are not good fits such as industries or geographies that require a standard not met by a firm’s offerings (e.g., HIPAA or GDPR requirements).  It also identifies roles not involved in purchasing a company’s products or services.  These individuals may be too junior in the organization or may not work in functions that use a company’s products or services.

RevenueBase argues that its knowledge graph technology improves the set of discoverable relationships, including the “longtail of customer-specific insights,” stated Feldman.  For example, RevenueBase can identify partners, investors, technologies in use, revenue streams, business models, key resources, and modern industries (such as Fintech and SaaS) that do not fall into standard industry classifications.

Conventional firmographics vendors must have a product manager pre-define the company attributes to be collected and then build these definitions into its data collection methodology and structure.  Because RevenueBase employs a graph database, it is not subject to these structural limitations and can identify uncommon or industry-specific elements that define the ICP.  The data structure also supports multi-point verification and data attribution.  In addition, data fields with high probabilities of changing, such as email addresses, job titles, and current employers, are re-verified at least four times per year.

RevenueBase promises to “replace all of your data vendors with one solution” that “reaches every company and decision-maker across the globe that will benefit from your unique offering.”  By delivering high-quality, targeted data directly to sales and marketing systems, revenue teams avoid time-consuming sales rep data research and managing databases. Data quality steps include custom research, quarterly email re-verification, and annual phone checks.  Data is delivered via a quarterly secure CSV file transfer with a 90% accuracy SLA.

Highspot $248M Series F

Sales Enablement Platform vendor Highspot closed on a $248 million Series F that valued the firm at $3.5 billion, up from its February valuation of $2.3 billion.  The firm, founded in 2012, has raised $648 million to date.  The round was led by B Capital Group and D1 Capital Partners, with Iconiq Growth, Madrona Venture Group, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire, and Tiger Global Management also participating.

“Technologies that unlock human potential are foundational to our economic future,” said Rashmi Gopinath, General Partner, B Capital.  “Highspot’s undeniable performance, coupled with the enthusiasm of their customer base, is a testament to how transformative their technology is for companies across industries and geographies.  We believe Highspot’s platform is an imperative for businesses aiming to drive sustainable growth.”

Highspot will deploy the funds to hire additional staff and open offices in the EMEA and APAC regions.  The firm, which doubled in size over the past two years to 800 employees, plans to add 500 staff over the next twelve months.  Highspot is based in Seattle, with offices in London, Munich, and Paris.

The pandemic accelerated demand for digital platforms such as Highspot as “road warriors have become home warriors,” said Wahbe.  In addition, the shift from traditional selling to digital required new tools and skills.  “Salespeople have to be better than ever in holding the attention of the customer.”

“Even before the onset of the pandemic, buyers were trending toward self-reliance with a plethora of resources at their fingertips, researching vendors on their own time and relying on salespeople as mere transaction facilitators,” Wahbe told VentureBeat via email. The sudden shift to a remote business landscape caused by COVID-19 accelerated this trend, and now modern buyers prefer — and expect — fully virtual sales … A handful of sales tech companies anticipated the trend toward digital selling and strategically designed their products to help turn salespeople from transaction helpers into heroes. Highspot is one such company.”

Highspot CEO Robert Wahbe, “Highspot raises $248M to bolster sales enablement using AI,” VentureBeat (January 13, 2022)

The firm, which has over 170 open positions, is broadly hiring across engineering, product, design, marketing, and sales.

“We see an incredible opportunity in front of us,” said CEO Robert Wahbe. “We need to continue to invest very significantly and invest in our go-to-market team, invest in our product, and [invest in] the capabilities of our product.”

Last month, Highspot announced a quartet of executive hires:

  • Arvind Prakash, Product Management VP: Prakash is a global product and technology leader with over twenty years of experience at Compass, Expedia Group, and Microsoft.
  • John Zhang, Engineering VP: Zhang held Engineering roles at Microsoft, Twitter and Weibo.
  • Julie Valenti, Account Management VP: Valenti has over twenty years of experience running customer-facing teams at DocuSign, Oracle, Responsys, and Yesmail.
  • Kelly Lewis, Revenue Enablement VP: Lewis joins with over 15 years of experience in revenue leadership and technology sales.  Lewis is a former Highspot customer joining from Amwell.

Highspot supports content recommendations, content engagement analytics, sales training, and sales coaching. 

The recently launched Highspot Marketplace is a partner exchange for marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success partners.  Companies can import packages of content, tools, and training from two dozen partners, including Sandler, Challenger, and Winning by Design.

Highspot Sales Training Dashboard

Highspot has grown revenue 935% over the last three years and posted an Annual Recurring Revenue net retention rate of 130% over the past year. 

Last year, platform usage increased 150%, with Highspot providing training to eight million salespeople, channel partners, service reps, and customers in digital sales experiences.  Highspot counts DocuSign, General Motors, Nestle, Siemens, and Verizon Media among its 700+ customers.

Wahbe envisions the firm going public but did not set an IPO timeframe. “Our focus continues to be on building a significant company in the enablement space,” said Wahbe. “We’re focused on growing the company, which of course then enables us to go public.”

Cognism $87.5M Series C

London-based Sales Intelligence vendor Cognism closed on an $87.5 million (£64m) Series C.  The round was led by Viking Global Investors and Blue Cloud Ventures, with follow-on investors AXA Venture Partners, Swisscom Ventures, and Volution.

Total funding is just shy of $130 million.

The funds will be deployed for European expansion and strengthening Cognism’s position in the United States.  Growth will be a “combination of organic growth and acquisitions.”

“The funding will help us empower many more businesses with international sales intelligence over the coming years, setting a new standard in data quality and compliance,” explained CEO James Isilay.  “It will accelerate our growth and global expansion plans as the leading provider of intelligent B2B sales data.”

“We will be organically expanding in the United States this year and have just hired new sales leadership (Mark Sparaco) to accelerate our growth,” Isilay told GZ Consulting.  “Europe remains our primary focus, but we see significant differentiation to other providers in our US and International data that we see significant growth opportunities.”

The firm will remain focused on improving its global data coverage and Sales Intelligence capabilities in 2022.  Roadmap features include marketing enhancements and localization in non-English speaking countries.

Cognism is coming off another strong year, with ARR growth hitting 100%.  They have over 1,000 customers, located in over forty countries.

Isilay is targeting another year of 100%+ growth and stated that Cognism is off to a good start in January with a “record revenue month.”

2021 data improvements include Diamond Data and the addition of Bombora’s intent data set as a premium offering.  Diamond data provides “the most accurate, GDPR & CCPA compliant phone-verified contacts for business development teams internationally, setting a new standard in data quality,” boasted the firm.

The Diamonds-on-Demand request feature supports on-demand phone verification from both the web application and the Cognism Chrome extension.  Users click on a Diamond Verify button to initiate the verification process, which is completed within 48 hours.  In addition, users can track the status on the platform.

“No other software company offers a truly global sales intelligence platform like Cognism. “By pairing our premium quality contact data with advanced contextual data points like technographics and buyer intent signals, we help modern revenue teams connect with confidence and exceed targets. We enable them to build a meaningful connection with their next best customer in the most predictable, efficient, and cost-effective way.”

Cognism CEO James Isilay

Cognism has grown to over 250 employees in seven countries: the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, South Africa, Croatia, Macedonia, and Germany.

Cognism did not state its market valuation.

Cognism also announced that it is SOC II Type 2 compliant.  The designation confirms that Cognism meets AICPA’s Trust Services Criteria for Security, Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity, and Privacy with regards to data.

“We live and breathe security and compliance at Cognism as we handle large amounts of company data that help our customers reach new target audiences,” blogged Cognism CTO Stjepan Buljat. “Most companies, when they start their SOC 2 compliance journey, choose to select type 1 qualification, whereas we’ve selected the more complex type 2 route – often described as the difference between a balance sheet audit and a full audit of financial operations.  Type 2 looks at the information security controls we have in action and confirms that we’re organised to handle the data privacy concerns of the largest companies on the planet.”

Cognism Funding History (Source: Owler)