Companies using HubSpot can use Exceed's AI-Powered Sales Assistant to automatically engage, qualify and nurture prospects.

HubSpot

Exceed.ai

Through the integration, customers can now automatically use Zoom to host meetings scheduled from HubSpot and deliver Zoom Video Webinars inside of the HubSpot platform with a new Zoom workflow action.

Zoom

General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that provides early-stage and growth equity investments. The company provides ongoing momentum that accelerates ideas, careers, and companies toward standout success.

General Catalyst

Matrix is an early-stage venture capital firm, investing from idea through Series A. As a close-knit team of former founders and company builders, Matrix has partnered with companies from Apple and FedEx to Oculus and Canva.  Other Matrix investments include Fivetran, Suno, Side, Afterpay, CTRL-Labs, Oculus, Zendesk, Hubspot, Apollo GraphQL, Flock Safety, GOAT, Postmates, Acacia Communications, and Sila.

Matrix

Scale Venture Partners is a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on intelligent business software with a Scaling Platform that has helped companies like Box, Bill.com, Hubspot, Docusign, JFrog, and WalkMe move from founder-led growth to a repeatable go-to-market machine. ScaleVP partners with entrepreneurs to support accelerated growth from the first customer to market leadership.

Scale Venture Partners

Sequoia is a venture capital focused on energy, financial, enterprise, healthcare, internet, and mobile startups. The firm helps a small number of daring founders build legendary companies. It spurs them to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The firm seeks to invest in all sectors with a focus on energy, financials and financial services, healthcare and healthcare services, Internet, mobile, outsourcing, and technology.

Sequoia Capital

Google Ventures invests in sectors including life sciences, consumer, enterprise, crypto, climate, and frontier technology. With Alphabet as its sole limited partner, Google Ventures focuses on long-term investments. Its operating partners assist startups in design, equity, diversity & inclusion, talent, and engineering and help them connect with Google for technology and expertise. Founded in 2009 as Google Ventures, Google Ventures manages over $8 billion in assets with 400 active portfolio companies in North America and Europe. Some notable investments include Uber, Nest, Slack, GitLab, and One Medical. Google Ventures is based in the San Francisco Bay Area with offices in Cambridge, New York, and London.

Google Ventures

Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works. Since 2009, they’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world's tenacious enterprise software companies from seed to IPO, including Airtable, Databricks, DocuSign, Guild Education, Hopin, Monday.com, nCino, Snowflake, Snyk, Stripe, Tanium, and Zoom. Salesforce Ventures leverages decades of expertise in the cloud and long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth.

Salesforce Ventures

Cross Creek is a venture capital firm founded in 2006 inside of Wasatch Advisors, Inc. Through its direct investment strategy and fund investment strategy the firm seeks to invest in what we believe are high quality late stage companies and top-tier venture capital funds. The strategies are mutually beneficial in their goal to strengthen ties between private and public investors and to achieve above market returns for limited partners.

Cross Creek

Altimeter Capital is a technology-focused investment firm based in Menlo Park, CA and Boston, MA.  Altimeter manages a long/short public equity fund and growth-stage private capital funds.

Altimeter Capital

CRV has been an investor in technology companies for almost half a century. The firm has backed nearly 400 startups in its 47-year history, including foundational companies like Twitter, Zendesk, Amgen, Hubspot, Parametric Technologies, Yammer, EqualLogic, and Sonus Networks. Half of the companies CRV has backed have gone public or been acquired. The firm focuses on enterprise, consumer, and deep-insight bioengineering.

Salesforce

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

Founded in China, Terminus claims to have the first account-based marketing (ABM) platform that unifies the marketing and sales teams’ roles under a single platform. Terminus specializes in B2B marketing and, according to the firm, its “Terminus Data Studio” has one of the largest B2B account databases, which by September 2021, covered more than 70 million businesses. Terminus’s customer data platform (CDP) is fully integrated with its marketing automation platform, through which teams can run multi-channel targeted campaigns across many channels including email, ad networks, live chat, and the web. This can then be analyzed with Terminus’ suite of analytics and attribution tools. By September 2021, Terminus served more than 1,000 customers, including Salesloft, Foundry, and Quantum Workplace.According to a study done by Forrester (in Q2 2020), Terminus has been recognized among the ABM platform leaders.Through a series of acquisitions, Terminus has transformed into a marketing cloud platform offering a range of services. Its two latest acquisitions took place within 12 months. In November 2020, it acquired Growflare, a lead generation and account-based intelligence platform catering to B2B startups, followed by B2B CDP Zylotech in September 2021. Terminus hoped to capitalize on these to build the most comprehensive ABM platform on the market.

<div>
 
 OneSignal provides an omnichannel customer engagement solution specializing in email, SMS, and in-app marketing. Its platform provides a self-serve, mobile-focused platform featuring 1) customer segmentation and A/B testing tools for personalized messaging 2) automated omnichannel delivery covering both mobile and web push notifications 3) a no-code customer journey orchestration system and 4) real-time reporting and analytics. The solution also leverages Machine Learning (ML) to analyze customer behavior and optimize delivery times for messages. The firm's platform can also be integrated with 30+ apps and services including marketing automation (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/58903">
 Movable Ink
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/222407">
 Blueshift
 </a>
 ), eCommerce (Shopify and Magento), and analytics solutions (Mixpanel and Google Analytics) to extend the capabilities of its solutions.
 
 
 The firm was originally founded as a mobile game studio by a group of Y Combinator alums who pivoted towards mobile-based marketing solutions. The firm claims that its background in app development provides it an edge over its peers where its solution is geared towards addressing the pain points of app developers. This is reflected in its solutions being featured in 500,000+ mobile applications as of September 2022 which represent nearly 15% of all apps.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The firm's solutions are geared toward game developers, news media, eCommerce, and FinTech firms including Zynga, USA Today, Bitcoin.com, and Upwork. As of September 2022, the firm claimed its platform is used by 1.7 million total users across 140 countries.
 
 
 The firm also has a partner program that features app developers (Bottle rocket, Blue Label), and marketing agencies (Ragnarok, Hawke Media to provide strategic consultancy services.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In February 2023, the firm received a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16162">
 strategic investment from ServiceNow Ventures
 </a>
 for an undisclosed amount. This is an extension of the company's&nbsp;
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12858">
 USD 50 million Series C funding
 </a>
 led by BAM Elevate in September 2022, to enhance its mobile data-driven email products and expand its analytics tools on customer insights. In addition, the funding was used to accelerate its geographic expansion into Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Prior to that in April 2021, 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1497">
 Hubspot
 </a>
 , made a strategic investment for an undisclosed amount in the firm in order to develop a technology integration with Hubspot&rsquo;s marketing cloud with OneSignal&rsquo;s platform as well as to support the further development of its solutions.&nbsp;
 
 
 In December 2021, the firm also reported that it has experienced a 1,800% YoY revenue growth over three years.
 
 
 
</div>

Giving creators the power of content monetization and audience engagement.

Creator Economy

<div>
 
 Community offers a message-based service where celebrities, influencers, and musicians can directly engage with their fans via text messages, photos, videos, and voice messages. Initially launched as Shimmur in 2017, the business had raised roughly USD 7 million during 2015-2017. However, it did not succeed, leading to the relaunch of Shimmur as Community in 2018, with the support of Hollywood talent manager Guy Oseary and famous actor and venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher. 
 
 
 Community was launched in July 2019 and has multiple celebrities, politicians, and artists (&ldquo;community leaders&rdquo;), such as Jennifer Lopez, Barack Obama, Kerry Washington, the Jonas Brothers, and Jake Paul using the platform to communicate with fans privately. Community leaders will be given a phone number which they can use to communicate directly to one or many fans based in North America without advertisements or algorithms. The platform&rsquo;s pricing is based on audience size, where community leaders pay a monthly fee ranging from less than USD 100 to several thousand. Community leaders can monetize by using the platform to sell merchandise bundles, rally the fanbase, and leverage the direct communication tool to promote shows and projects.
 
 
 By January 2020, the company had amassed around 500 community leaders, of which 25% were prominent celebrities with large audiences, and the rest were creators, athletes, authors, entertainers, and public figures, with over 200 million Community texts sent. As of August 2020, the company claims that the number of community leaders has increased to 2,000, exchanging 2 million texts daily (celebrity and fans collectively), and as of September 2020, it has almost 20 million members on its platform. However, in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11278">
 June 2022
 </a>
 , the company reportedly laid off ~40 employees due to adverse market conditions.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its last funding round (April 2021), the company raised USD 40 million from Salesforce Ventures. 
 
</div>

Eliminating financial intermediaries by directly connecting individuals and businesses

P2P Financial Platforms

Pipe is a trading platform and technology company that has created a marketplace for trading recurring revenue streams. The company operates a trading platform that allows businesses with recurring revenue models, such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, to sell their future revenue contracts to institutional investors. This provides businesses with an upfront capital injection that can be used to fund growth initiatives without diluting equity or taking on debt.
Pipe's platform connects businesses to investors like banks, hedge funds, pension funds, and family offices seeking fixed-income assets with recurring payouts. Companies sign contracts with their customers for recurring payments and list those contracts on Pipe's platform. Investors then purchase these contracts, providing the company with immediate funding.
Pipe charges a trading fee of up to 1% on executed trades facilitated through its platform. As of September 2022, over 20,000 companies had linked around USD 7 billion worth of recurring revenue assets to Pipe's platform.
In March 2022, Pipe launched a financing product called "mine now, pay later" specifically targeting bitcoin mining companies with recurring revenue from hosting services. This allowed mining firms to monetize their future revenues for upfront capital to fund operations and growth.

Tools for streamlining or improving one or more aspects of contractual agreements

Contract Management Tools

PandaDoc is a document management and automation platform that streamlines the process of creating, editing, and sharing documents. It offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and customizable templates, enabling users to create media-rich documents 50% faster than traditional methods. PandaDoc's key product offerings include real-time, multi-person document editing capabilities, approval workflows, signing orders, and automated follow-ups.
One of PandaDoc's standout features is its seamless integration with popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. This integration allows users to import data and products from their CRM directly into documents, creating interactive pricing tables with just a few clicks. By keeping the CRM as the single source of truth, PandaDoc eliminates the need for manual data entry, reducing the risk of errors and saving time.
PandaDoc also provides powerful workflow management tools, such as the ability to lock content, restrict editing permissions, and create custom roles with corresponding access levels. These features help organizations maintain control over their documents and ensure a smooth, conflict-free workflow.
In terms of business impact, PandaDoc's customers have reported an 87% increase in completed documents every month and up to a 36% improvement in close rates. Additionally, some customers have experienced a 65% reduction in document creation time and a 30% reduction in time-to-close.

Imbuing emotion into human-digital interactions

Digital Humans

<div>
 
 Tavus is a video personalization platform designed to improve content creation and engagement, particularly for sales and marketing teams. Utilizing advanced AI technology, Tavus streamlines the process by enabling users to record a single video serving as a template for generating personalized AI-driven videos. These videos are customized with unique voice variables tailored to individual customers. Tavus offers a comprehensive set of features, including AI voice and face replication, the ability to create branded landing pages, dynamic background options, custom call-to-action buttons, and personalized video previews. It also integrates with 100+ marketing, sales, ecommerce, and communication platforms, including Zapier, Salesforce, and HubSpot.
 
 
 The platform claims a 10x increase in engagement through personalized videos, a 250% boost in email click-through rates, a 3x jump in response rates, a 500% ROI for marketing expenses, and an 85% surge in viewers' decisions to make a purchase.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of August 2023, its customers include Verkada, Vise, Genesys, Allurion, and AB Tasty.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2024, Tavus raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27530">
 USD 18 million
 </a>
 in Series A funding led by Scale Venture Partners to accelerate its product development and model advancement. The company also planned to expand its sales in the enterprise and mid-market sectors.
 
 
 
</div>

We're reinventing financial services with capital, payments & platform solutions so every growing company can reach their full potential.

Tavus is an AI research company focused on making digital experiences as immersive as face to face. They do this with their best-in-class AI avatar models that can be used by developers and companies to create async and real-time video experiences with a human digital twin.

Community is a new social engagement platform that makes two-way communication between influencers and their followers simple, effective, and scalable. It connects businesses, brands, governmental and public personalities, creators, singers, celebrities, and others to their consumers at scale via a unique 10-digit phone number.

The platform is built for and by finance professionals to automate and optimise finance back-office processes with highly customisable workflows. Kolleno simplifies the management of client payments, related communications, and financial reporting by keeping everything in sync - data, systems, and people. Powered by advanced AI capabilities, Kolleno pulls data from all incoming accounting systems, ERPs and CRMs, enabling users to leverage context-sensitive content across key finance systems, processes and workflows. We foresee traditional finance operations transforming into seamless digital experiences for everyone involved – including CFOs, finance teams and their clients. Ultimately, Kolleno helps businesses to run everyday operations intelligently, freeing up resources to focus on higher-priority, growth-driving activities.

Draft is a marketing company that provides content marketing, social media content, SEO, and content writing services.

OneSignal is a customer messaging and engagement platform that allows businesses to provide a seamless messaging experience to create meaningful customer connections. OneSignal's multi-channel platform enables businesses to deliver over 8 billion messages daily. OneSignal is designed to scale with businesses and deliver messages more quickly. The platform leverages machine learning to send communications at the optimal time by creating personalized messages and sending them to the right audiences by comparing performance, enabling clients to deliver engaging mobile and web push messages across all platforms.

Pipe operates a global trading platform for recurring revenue streams, connecting companies to institutional investors to trade in real time. It makes recurring revenue streams tradable for their annual value offering more cash flow for scaling companies

Lorem is an on-demand freelance marketplace that connects non-technical business owners with high-quality web developers and designers in less than 10 minutes. Our goal is to empower the modern day business owner to succeed and enable freelance as the Future of Work with our global network of experts. We’re hiring! Head over to our jobs page to learn more: https://angel.co/loremtech/jobs Funded by Flybridge Capital & Techstars

Sigstr’s relationship marketing platform allows marketers to turn the billions of 1:1 emails sent every year into powerful brand engagements. With integrations into the leading CRMs, MAPs and Marketing Technologies, Sigstr helps companies get more out of their employee email by turning it into a channel that understands and engages their most important audiences. Leading brands like AT&T, Amazon, SendGrid, Terminus, and Yext are using Sigstr to amplify the value of every email their employees send. Sigstr is headquartered in downtown Indianapolis and is funded by Edison Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Hubspot Ventures, High Alpha Capital, Battery Ventures, 4G Ventures, Elevate Ventures and Grand Ventures.

Blissfully helps companies discover, integrate, and manage the right technologies by providing hands-on IT as a Service and complementary software. Blissfully was proudly founded in 2016 by serial technology entrepreneurs. Previously, they founded Boundless, an education company that creates online textbooks and learning tools. Boundless raised over $10M in venture capital, reaches millions of students and teachers every month, and was acquired in 2015.

From paid search and web analytics, to social media and emerging new tech, AdStage unleashes the power of data to help marketers make decisions that drive business growth. Today, paid marketers at leading agencies and companies in almost every industry depend on our platform as their trusted source of truth.

With the largest public personality platform in the world, Crystal helps you communicate with anyone based on their unique personality.

Grow is a business intelligence dashboard software for small and medium businesses that makes it easy to track the right metrics, make good decisions, and lead with confidence. Quickly set up dashboards in minutes, not months; connect data sources like QuickBooks, Salesforce and Zendesk—along with your own databases and spreadsheets—without waiting for IT. Grow helps you grow your business faster by allowing everyone to see the score. Employees engage when they know the score and what they can do to win. Leaders who know inspire confidence, respect, admiration, and loyalty so they can lead their teams to success. Founded in 2014, the company is headquartered in Orem, Utah, United States.

Drift is a platform that connects businesses with website visitors in real-time using bots and artificial intelligence and obtaining real-time customer feedback through live chat sessions, enabling clients to generate qualified leads, accelerate the sales cycle, and offer a modern buying experience for potential customers.

PandaDoc is a document automation software as a service with built-in electronic signatures, workflow management, and document builder.

Terminus is the industry’s first account-based marketing platform that enables B2B marketers to target companies, engage decision-makers on their terms, and accelerate sales pipeline velocity at scale

Privy specializes in e-commerce marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Its mission is to provide the tools, education, and support small e-commerce brands that need to grow their online stores and build thriving businesses. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

HubSpot develops cloud-based, inbound marketing software that allows businesses to transform the way that they market online. Its service portfolio includes social media publishing and monitoring, blogging, SEO, website content management, email marketing, marketing automation, and reporting and analytics.

<div> HubSpot Inc. (NYSE: HUBS) is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that provides a suite of tools for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot operates in over 120 countries, serving more than 184,000 customers as of October 2023. HubSpot has been listed on the NYSE since 2014, and generated revenue of USD 1.7 billion in 2022. HubSpot operates as a single operating segment, although it generates revenue from two sources: Subscription and Professional Services and Other. Subscription revenue (~98% of total revenue) is from customers utilizing HubSpot's CRM Platform to address their needs in inbound marketing, sales, service, operations, and content management. Meanwhile, customer onboarding, training, and consulting services are the main sources of Professional Services and Other revenue. Americas is HubSport&rsquo;s largest market (~62% of total revenue in 2022), followed by Europe (~29%) and Asia Pacific (~9%). HubSpot expects revenue of USD 2.1 billion in 2023 (USD 1.7 billion in 2022) and non-GAAP operating income is expected to be in the range of USD 293 million and USD 297 million (a loss of USD 109 million in 2022). HubSpot is committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. </div>

Hubspot

Oxygen, HubSpot's leading solutions partner in Hong Kong & Greater China Expands to UAE

HubSpot Ventures

Old CRMs were complicated, expensive, and limited. Simpler, cheaper CRMs targeting SMEs have arrived.

SME CRM

This type of CRM can also be known as Strategic CRM as it allows businesses to collect, organize and share valuable customer data among multiple teams across the company, which enables them to work coherently to increase customer lifetime value and thereby profitability. 
The two main aspects of Collaborative CRM are: 1) Interaction management, and 2) Channel management. The former allows businesses to analyze all customer interactions to proactively identify issues and resolve them efficiently. The latter enables businesses to identify and record the communication preferences of customers. This type of CRM is ideal for a business which has multiple departments and stakeholders, offices/branches in various locations and a heavy focus on customer data being transparent and easily accessible by everyone.

This type of CRM collates, stores and analyzes customer data, which includes basic information, marketing data, sales data and customer service records. Using this information, users can get a better idea of customer demand trends and purchase behaviour. Further, companies can track leads and identify which marketing campaigns generate the highest ROI. Sales data helps users identify which products/services are best sellers, seasonal trends, highest revenue generating sales representatives and most profitable locations. Moreover, service data helps businesses assess three main areas: customer service, customer satisfaction and employee performance. This type of CRM is ideal for companies which have sales processes driven by account management and end-users who value metrics and are encouraged by data transparency.

This type of CRM facilitates smooth business operations, by focusing on the automation of three main areas: sales, marketing and after-sales service. It automates the customer record creation process and daily tasks such as scheduling meetings, transitioning leads and generating sales reports. These CRMs also include marketing automation tools for complex email marketing campaigns. Customer service is also automated by the provision of self-service options via phone or laptop. This type of CRM is particularly useful for businesses involving heavy customer interaction.

Platforms that allow creators to share several types of content. Some platforms also offer fan engagement/ interactions with the creative artist via videos/ live streams.

Platforms that offer exclusive content to signed up members.

Platforms that allow creators to share their written works and blogs.

Platforms that provide tools to discover relevant analytics, produce content, engage with the audience, and help with the overall process.

Platforms that allow creators to share one of either videography, live streams, photos, music or audio podcasts with fan engagement capabilities.

Blockchain-based Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) allow creators to transfer ownership of their content via platforms that share proceeds with buyers, sellers, creators, and platforms via smart contracts.

Firms positioned as an 'all-in-one' marketing platform,  providing a variety of functions across the MarTech stack

Startups providing platforms for planning and managing marketing campaigns.

Startups offering tools for finding and attracting potential customers with targeted ads.

Startups providing tools to automate the execution of marketing campaigns across varied channels.

Startups providing tools for gathering, cleaning, and enhancing customer data to provide deep analytics. This also includes firms offering account-based marketing (ABM) solutions to drive targeted and personalized campaigns.

Companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for marketing

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 Salesforce introduces Marketing Cloud Growth, a whole new solution for small enterprises that merges CRM, AI, and data to boost marketing abilities.
 This innovative solution works on Salesforce's Einstein 1 customer platform. It allows the linking of marketing automation with sales, service, and commerce. It also comes with key features such as slicing up audiences with natural language prompts, auto-producing campaign briefs, individualizing customer relationships via consolidated profiles, and enhancing campaign performance through current reports and AI-backed insights.
</div> Analyst QuickTake : 
 Salesforce's launch of Marketing Cloud Growth represents a strategic commitment to providing small businesses with a comprehensive marketing solution. In direct competition with <a href="https: 
//www.hubspot.com/products/crm/starter"> HubSpot, </a> Marketing Cloud Growth positions itself as a robust alternative by offering a unified platform that integrates AI and CRM capabilities, providing small businesses with a comprehensive solution to drive growth and efficiency in their marketing efforts.

Hubspot

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