Ridge Ventures funds experienced founders redefining how the world interacts with software.    Whether for the cloud or the edge, we look for companies delivering advanced technologies, new distribution models and incredible user experiences to market.    While we’re focused on SaaS and infrastructure solutions for the enterprise, we also back startups in adtech, gaming and ecommerce.    We are firm believers in “where there’s a big problem, there’s a big opportunity.”  We love Series A deals and helping create something out of chaos.

Ridge Ventures

Firebolt Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California. The firm focuses on early-stage and seed-stage investments in companies that operate within the industries involved with digital media, mobile, software, e-commerce, and information technology. Moreover, the firm takes an algorithmic approach to investing. Firebolt Ventures was started in 2014 by Cherian Mathew.

Firebolt Ventures

Defy is a seed-stage venture fund focused on emerging high-potential opportunities. It is driven by a passion for working closely with entrepreneurs, especially through the transformative time after seed funding. The firm invests in people and in their conviction and talent for creating real change. Defy was founded in 2016 by Neil Sequeira and Trae Vassallo and is based in San Mateo, California, United States.

Defy.vc

Aircover

Aircover is a real-time sales enablement software powering in-meeting sales tools and intelligence. It integrates with customer-facing meetings and provides just-in-time assistance based on the conversation. Aircover, powered by Enablement AI, is a heads-up display for the reps that incorporates coaching and playbooks into a single pane of glass. By providing real-time assistance to reps, Aircover reduces the number of follow-up meetings required per prospect. Reduce action items and track the remaining ones with integrated in-meeting tools.

<div><p>Founded in 2021, Aircover, is a conversational intelligence platform that offers real-time tools for sales teams. Its core product “Aircover App for Zoom Meetings” was launched in partnership with Zoom, to provide sales representatives with on-demand insights and tools for client engagement. The platform integrates with existing customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and automates certain aspects of the sales process. Through natural language processing Aircover is able to analyze conversations and gather insights. The company was co-founded by Andrew Levy, Alex Young, and David Levy who previously worked together at Apteligent (formerly Crittercism), an enterprise mobile user experience analytics platform, which was later sold to VMware in 2017. As of September 2021, the platform was in beta.  </p></div>

Artificial intelligence is helping sales teams manage relationships and optimize the customer lifecycle.

Sales Engagement Platforms

<div><p>Powerful in-meeting sales tools and intelligence.</p></div>

Using AI to mimic and understand human language

Natural Language Processing Tools

<div>
  <p>
    Founded in 2021, Aircover, is a conversational intelligence platform that offers real-time tools for sales teams. Its core product “Aircover App for Zoom Meetings” was launched in partnership with Zoom, to provide sales representatives with on-demand insights and tools for client engagement. The platform integrates with existing customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and automates certain aspects of the sales process. Through natural language processing Aircover is able to analyze conversations and gather insights. The company was co-founded by Andrew Levy, Alex Young, and David Levy who previously worked together at Apteligent (formerly Crittercism), an enterprise mobile user experience analytics platform, which was later sold to VMware in 2017. As of September 2021, the platform was in beta.  
  </p>
  <p>
    In September 2021, the company raised USD 3 million in a seed funding round led by Defy Partners. The company intends to use the funds for product development and build its partner ecosystem. 
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    Outreach is a sales intelligence platform that offers a suite of tools to help sales reps improve communication with prospects and close deals. The platform integrates with existing customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and provides sales sequences, personalization tools, and multi-channel communication capabilities. The company is deeply integrated with third-party apps to attract large enterprise customers and claims to have a network of around 1,000 partners. As of June 2021, the platform served more than 4,800 companies, with the majority being mid-market tech companies in North America. It opened its London office in February 2020 to further establish a presence in the European market, which represents around 5% of its customer base.&nbsp; As of June 2021, the company has more than 800 employees globally across Seattle, San Francisco, and new global offices in London and Prague.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    The platform offers insights on the most effective content channels and the optimal times to contact prospects using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology. Further, managers can track sales rep and team-wide performance paving the way for sales coaching using customer interactions. Outreach&rsquo;s &ldquo;Amplify AI suite&rdquo;, launched in 2018, leverages ML to categorize buyer intent based on responses to email communication. In May 2020, the company announced the beta launch of &ldquo;Outreach Kaia&rdquo;, a voice-based AI sales assistant. In 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16031?industryIds=27">
      January 2023, 
    </a>
    Outreach introduced Smart Email Assist, an AI-powered automatic email response generator, to streamline workflows for sales teams. In March 2023, the firm introduced 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17465">
      multiple new features
    </a>
     to improve sales pipeline performance and efficiency, including the Create and Close Dashboard, Create Pipeline Calculator, Buyer Topics and Reactions, Success Plans Methodologies, Deal Grid, and Deal Overview. 
  </p>
  <p>
    The company also opted to bolster its product offering by acquiring revenue intelligence platform Canopy.io in October 2021. With this acquisition, Outreach strengthens its sales analytics and forecasting capabilities. Canopy.io will be the foundation of &ldquo;Outreach Commit,&rdquo; a new forecasting tool under Outreach&rsquo;s suite of products. 
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Key customers and partnerships</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    In March 2023, the company 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17465?industryIds=27">
      expanded its partnership with Snowflake, 
    </a>
    a data platform, to introduce a new offering called &ldquo;Outreach Data Sharing,&rdquo; which enables organisations to connect Outreach's datasets with other enterprise data and improve sales cycle. 
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    In June 2021, the company raised USD 200 million in a Series G funding round, valuing the company at USD 4.4 billion, a significant jump from its USD 1.3 billion valuation in June 2020. The significant jump in valuation may be justified by the company's notable growth over the past 12 months. The funds will be allocated toward expanding into new markets, growing its sales and marketing teams, and platform development.
  </p>
  <p>
    Additionally, in June 2021, the company stated that its annual recurring revenue doubled in Q1 2021 compared to the previous year. In 2020, the company reported a run-rate revenue of USD 100 million.  
  </p>
</div>


Outreach

<div>
  <p>
    Salesloft offers customer relationship management (CRM) integration, sales cadence, sales pipeline management and analytics reporting. It appeals to sales professionals working across the customer lifecycle. The company has offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, London, Indianapolis, New York City, and Guadalajara, Mexico. In August 2021, it announced growth plans in the European market by opening a data center in Germany and doubling headcount in the market. As of February 2022, the platform served 2,000+ customers and has established a partner ecosystem of 100+ companies. In January 2021, Salesloft reported that its client profile had shifted from mid-market to large enterprises such as Google, LinkedIn, Cisco, and Dell. 
  </p>
  <p>
    Salesloft strengthened its product offering in 2021, launched its &ldquo;Deal Engagement Score,&rdquo; an AI-driven function that can prioritize deals based on more than 30 data elements across its Cadence, Conversations, and Deals product offerings, in March 2021. Furthermore, the company announced Cadence Step Analytics and Pre-Built Cadence Frameworks. Cadence Step Analytics allows the user to gain insights on the most effective approach taken through Cadence. Pre-Built Cadence Frameworks is powered by best practices developed through positive sales interactions and the best-performing sales teams. More recently, in April 2022, the company launched its proprietary forecasting tool &ldquo;Forecast by Salesloft&rdquo;, to support organisations in generating predictable growth. 
  </p>
  <p>
    In February 2022, the company announced the launch of its four tier 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8630">
      <u>Technology Partner Program</u>
    </a>
     to provide growth opportunities for its partner ecosystem. Additionally, Salesloft also announced the launch of its Market Development Fund, which aims to support the funding of partner programs and pipeline development and create awareness among the Salesloft ecosystem. In September 2022, the firm unveiled 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12862">
      <u>Salesloft Rhythm</u>
    </a>
    , a platform to unify sales workflows to be launched in 2023. The firm claims that a unique aspect of this next generation solution is that the platform will provide an explanation as to why the action is important and what the likely outcome will be. 
  </p>
  <p>
    Salesloft has been active in the M&amp;A space. In July 2021, the company acquired InStereo, a sales strategy consulting firm. The acquisition of InStereo established Salesloft's focus on buyer engagement in sales and marketing campaigns. InStereo initially partnered with Salesloft in 2018 and had completed more than 150 client engagements for companies such as 3M (American multinational conglomerate), Cargill (global food company), and Pegasystems (American software company). In February 2024, the company 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27169">
      acquired Drift,
    </a>
     a conversational B2B marketing platform, to improve its customer journey orchestration tools for B2B sales teams.
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Key customers and partnerships</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    In August 2022, the firm 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12545">
      partnered with Highspot,
    </a>
     a sales coaching platform, to further streamline the client engagement process for sales teams.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    In December 2021, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Vista Equity Partners at a valuation of USD 2.3 billion, to expand beyond North America and particularly in Europe. In January 2021, Salesloft raised USD 100 million in a funding round led by Owl Rock Capital, to expanding its operations globally while investing in new vertical markets, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-driven insights, and product innovation, as well as growing its headcount by more than 30% within the next year. 
  </p>
  <p>
    In August 2022, the firm reported that annual recurring revenue (ARR) surpassed USD 100 million in Q2 2021.
  </p>
</div>


Salesloft

<div>
  <p>
    People.ai began as a revenue intelligence platform but has widened its product to cover marketing and sales. 
    Its 
     artificial intelligence-based (AI-based) sales and marketing solutions offer sales playbooks and recommendations, automated customer relationship management (CRM), and pipeline visibility. In May 2019,  the company launched &ldquo;The Wire&rdquo; which offers a real-time feed of recommended actions based on data collected from sales activity on emails, calendars and CRM systems.The platform is well integrated counting over 90 application programming interface (API) integrations with video conferencing and collaboration tools such as Zoom, GSuite, and Slack. 
  </p>
  <p>
    In September 2022, the firm 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13046">
      launched new features
    </a>
     1) Engagement Dashboards which contain visualisations that provide insight on buyer/seller engagement and 2) Account Planning with a native Salesforce integration which allows sales teams to operationalize account plans and provide customer insights. In May 2023, the firm 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18990">
      launched AccountGPT,
    </a>
     an AI-driven enhancement to its account planning application that leverages generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to automate sections of account plans, including market research, by extracting data from publicly available sources such as company websites and earnings reports.&nbsp;
  </p>
  <p>
    Further, the company claimed to have around 70 patents combined (secured and in progress) for its AI-based intelligent matching of customer data and profiles. The platform claimed its AI system has been trained on 1.1 billion sales activities and over USD 239 billion in closed deals. The company planned to deploy its platform outside of the sales realm and into verticals such as real estate, financial services, and recruitment, which already account for a small share of use cases.
  </p>
  <p>
    In October 2020, the company acquired ClosePlan, a sales intelligence app, to further strengthen its AI sales solution. ClosePlan offers sales playbooks, deal scoring, and account planning solutions. 
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Key customers and partnerships</b>
  </p>
  <p>
    In July 2022, the company 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11924">
      partnered with integrated solution provider Oracle,
    </a>
     to use AI-powered sales automation tool &quot;Oracle Fusion Sales&quot; to support its sales process.
  </p>
  <p>
    <b>Funding and financials </b>
  </p>
  <p>
    People.ai raised USD 100 million in a Series D funding round at a post-money valuation of USD 1.1 billion in August 2021. The round was co-led by new investors Akkadian Ventures and Mubadala Capital. The fresh funds are expected to be allocated to product development through investments in its SmartData platform, and to expand into new industry segments and geographies. The company also revealed that its customer base grew 260% over the 12 months preceding the funding, likely leading to its unicorn valuation. 
  </p>
</div>


People.ai

<div>
  <p>
    Yesware is an email based campaign automation platform for customer engagement. The software offers prospecting tools such as  follow up templates and the ability to schedule meetings through email. The platform includes a native customer relationship management (CRM) integration with Salesforce. In 2013, the company acquired Attachments.me, an email file-sharing startup.  The acquisition was motivated by its complementary backend email technology which added attachment tracking capabilities to Yesware’s platform. The acquisition effectively led to the establishment of a physical office in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Yesware reported a large customer base at the time.
  </p>
  <p>
    As of November 2020, Yesware served around 800,000 total users across 10,000 companies including Yelp, Financial Times, Zendesk, and Cloudflare. The company reported positive cash flow for the first time in Q2 2018 with 60,000 active users.
  </p>
  <p>
    In 
    October
     2022, the company was acquired by 
    Vendasta, a Canadian eCommerce solution provider, to integrate the solution into Vendasta's platform. 
  </p>
</div>


Yesware (acquired by Vendasta)

<div>
  <p>
    Revenue.io (formerly RingDNA) is a sales intelligence platform that offers sales playbooks, multichannel outreach, performance insights, and customer relationship management (CRM) integrations. In addition, the platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to transform conversational data between customers and sales reps into actionable insights on sales rep performance which can be used in building buyer profiles. Revenue.io’s AI-based guided selling features integrate with its sales playbook to create a list of priority leads and then recommends the best way to reach out to a potential buyer.  
  </p>
  <p>
    Revenue.io released its conversation AI solution in November 2019 based on data from more than 130 million sales conversations. This allowed the platform to add sales coaching features to its platform.
  </p>
  <p>
    Guided selling capabilities were introduced in September 2020 and made accessible through its Salesforce CRM integration.
  </p>
  <p>
    The company’s most recent funding round was an October 2018 Series B for USD 30 million led by Goldman Sachs. The funds were allocated for product development and recruitment. Revenue.io’s customers include Hewlett Packard, Amazon Web Services, Autodesk, SAP Concur, Lyft, and Twilio.
  </p>
</div>


Revenue.io

Sales engagement platforms use personalization to enhance the effectiveness of sales outreach

AI/ML solutions automate and streamline sales processes by providing insights

Sales workflow automation platforms provide solutions for distributed sales teams

Tools for recording & analyzing live sales calls over voice & video.

<div>
  <p>
    Powerful in-meeting sales tools and intelligence.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    Reduct is an AI-powered cloud video platform that aims to allow for richer human communication. The company is led by Prabhas Pokharel and Robert Ochshor, based in San Francisco.
  </p>
</div>


Reduct

<div>
  <p>
    MonkeyLearn provides a simple graphical interface where users can create customized text classification and extraction analysis by training machine learning models such as sentiment analysis, topic detection, keyword extraction, and more. MonkeyLearn can be integrated with hundreds of other applications through its direct integrations and open API.All of that without the need of roping in developers or data scientists.
  </p>
</div>


MonkeyLearn

<div>
  <p>
    Keatext will help you cultivate meaningful relationships with your customers by providing you with instant clarity on what they care about most, and by increasing your ability to respond rapidly to their needs by synthesizing large volumes of unstructured feedback data from multiple channels (such as open-survey questions, online reviews, chat logs and social media posts) to produce actionable insights delivered on one comprehensive custom dashboard.
  </p>
</div>


Keatext

<div>
  <p>
    NeuralSpace is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform which offers developers a suite of APIs for Natural Language Processing (NLP) that you can use without having any Machine Learning (ML) or Data Science knowledge. Along with some of the common languages like English, German, French, etc., the platform supports various languages spoken acrossIndia, South East Asia, Africa, Middle East, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, aka, low-resource languages. The primary goal is to democratize NLP and make sure any developer can create apps with advanced language processing in any language and not just English. The platform comes with various language processing Apps that can help you classify long or short text into categories, identify speakers in a given audio file, transcribe speech into text, and much more. The AI models that power our platform are state-of-the-art, quality assured and ready for you to customize or consume out-of-the-box. The NeuralSpace platform is designed as a no-code/low-code platform for you to go to market faster and focus on the business problems you are solving, while we take care of all your language processing needs.
  </p>
</div>


NeuralSpace

NLP tools such as chatbots are used to cater to each individual

NLP tools are built using AI/ML technologies

Some NLP tools are built using foundation models

NLP tools are provided for other companies to integrate into their workflows

Solutions that enable real-time conversation through chatbots or automate ticket routing to relevant agents.

Aircover

Sales Engagement Platforms

Key stats

Company Brief

Funding

Investors

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless