Signia Venture Partners is an early stage fund dedicated to helping passionate entrepreneurs realize their vision and build impactful, high-growth ventures. We invest between $500k and $3m for an initial investment across a wide range of technology businesses, including within marketplaces, ecommerce, gaming, consumer mobile, virtual reality, enterprise technology, big data, and security.

Signia Venture Partners

CapitalX is an early-stage venture capital firm founded by angel investor Cindy Bi, an enterprise focused generalist. You may expect to receive high-conviction investments of $100k/$250k in pre-seed/seed rounds.

CapitalX

Position Ventures invests in early-stage startups and positions them for success by helping founders nail their positioning and communications strategy.

Position Ventures

Kyber Knight Capital is a venture capital firm invests in early stage funding in areas of commerce, AI and Labor.

Kyber Knight Capital

Norwest is a venture capital and growth equity investment firm that specializes in venture and growth equity companies. Since its inception, it has invested in more than 600 companies and partnered with over 140 active companies across our venture and growth equity portfolio. The firm invests in early to late-stage companies across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. It offers a deep network of connections, operating experience, and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders scale their businesses.

Norwest Venture Partners

Lavender

Lavender is a software application that offers AI sales email coaches and web services. They combine AI recommendations and reply optimization with tools including gifs, spelling, grammar, spam check, subject line analysis, prospect, and company research enabling salespersons to write business emails.

<div>Lavender is an AI-powered email assistant tailored for sales professionals and teams. It utilizes advanced AI, notably OpenAI's GPT-3, to provide real-time support for crafting engaging and personalized emails. Lavender aims to improve email intelligence by identifying and addressing response-hindering factors, offering personalized intros, real-time scoring to help users write effectively, and optimizing email content through AI. It caters to individuals and teams, empowering managers with email intelligence and a coaching portal to track and improve team performance. The platform is also integrated with popular email platforms (Gmail, Outlook), LinkedIn, and other sales engagement solutions, such as<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/247809">Outreach</a>and<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/68161">Salesloft</a>.&nbsp;</div>

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

<div>
 
 Lavender is an AI-powered email assistant tailored for sales professionals and teams. It utilizes advanced AI, notably OpenAI's GPT-3, to provide real-time support for crafting engaging and personalized emails. Lavender aims to improve email intelligence by identifying and addressing response-hindering factors, offering personalized intros, real-time scoring to help users write effectively, and optimizing email content through AI. It caters to individuals and teams, empowering managers with email intelligence and a coaching portal to track and improve team performance. The platform is also integrated with popular email platforms (Gmail, Outlook), LinkedIn, and other sales engagement solutions, such as
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/247809">
 Outreach
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/68161">
 Salesloft
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 The platform claims to improve performance by up to 3x, achieve a 20.5% reply rate, and bolster email productivity while maintaining GDPR and SOC 2 compliance.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2023, the platform had served ~11,000 users, including companies like Twilio, Segment, Sendoso, Sharebite, and Clari.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 In February 2023, the company secured USD 13.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners. It planned to use the funds for further platform development and to expand its team. 
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Forethought offers a unified customer support platform based on generative AI. Its primary product is &ldquo;SupportGPT,&rdquo; a conversational AI chatbot that can build workflows, resolve queries, assist human agents, and fill knowledge gaps.&nbsp;
 
 
 Forethought&rsquo;s solutions include:
 
 
 1) Solve: A generative AI chatbot that independently handles simple but repetitive customer service tickets. The AI automatically analyzes historical customer service logs and knowledge documents to generate responses.&nbsp;
 
 
 2) Assist: Assists human agents by automatically generating responses to end users based on conversation history, provides context by analyzing past tickets, and draws on&nbsp; knowledge articles to help resolve queries.
 
 
 3) Triage: Analyzes ticket details and historical data to prioritize and route tickets to the correct agents
 
 
 4) Discover: Analyzes customer service history to generate new knowledge articles or recommend new workflows where gaps exist
 
 
 Forethought also offers a platform called &ldquo;SupportGPT Playground,&rdquo; which allows customers to train and experiment with SupportGPT using their own data. In September 2023, the company launched Autoflows that uses natural language prompts to undertake a series of tasks in order to automate customer service interactions.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of April 2023, Forethought&rsquo;s solutions were available for integration on several customer service platforms, including Zendesk, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Freshdesk, Dialpad, and Talkdesk.
 
 
 The platform leverages 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/362567">
 OpenAI
 </a>
 &rsquo;s large language models (LLMs), using the same technology as ChatGPT, along with its own algorithms to limit the data that the AI model can access. This reduces the possibility of completely incorrect responses (hallucinations)&mdash;a documented issue with unconstrained LLMs such as ChatGPT. It does this by using the algorithms to generate a query that is submitted to the large AI model as a guide, which allows responses to be more specific to a customer&rsquo;s workflow.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 At its launch in March 2023, its customers included Kickfin and Upwork. As of April 2023, Forethought&rsquo;s customers included Lime, iFIT, Achievers, Q4 Inc., Etekcity, Beeline, Uncommon Goods, Spoonflower, Kajabi, and PDQ.
 
 
 In October 2023, Forethought joined the 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23307">
 Amazon Web Services (AWS) 
 </a>
 Partner Network to make its services accessible on the AWS Marketplace.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and Financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Forethought raised USD 65 million in a Series C funding round led by Steadfast Capital to accelerate growth. Total raised funding stood at USD 92 million as of April 2023. In 2021, the company reported an increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 5x.&nbsp;
 
 
 
</div>

Forethought

<div>
 
 Got It AI has developed a ChatGPT-like conversational chatbot for enterprise Q&amp;A applications. Its solutions include:
 
 
 1)&nbsp; ArticleBot: A virtual agent solution that analyzes an organization&rsquo;s customer service articles or external knowledge sources to provide accurate conversational support in customer service and employee workflow applications&nbsp;
 
 
 2) AutoFlows: A tool that helps analyze customer service voice, chat logs and other data to identify the dialogue paths in a given workflow and build them into a virtual agent. AutoFlows requires no code; integration with customer systems is assisted by a human team
 
 
 3) Truth Checker: An advanced AI that can identify if an AI is &ldquo;hallucinating,&rdquo; a common issue with large language models (LLMs) causing incorrect response generation. Truth Checker is able to detect when a response generated for a customer query is irrelevant or entirely incorrect, preventing the response from being delivered to the user and providing links to knowledge articles, if so.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of January 2023, ArticleBot operated on a fine-tuned version of Davinci-3, a variant of OpenAI&rsquo;s GPT-3.5 LLM, trained on a database defined by the organization alongside Got It&rsquo;s proprietary &ldquo;Truth Checker&rdquo; AI.&nbsp;
 
 
 For customers unwilling to use a large open-source LLM via an API or those that are unable to operate an expensive LLM on-premises, Got It offers its own proprietary Enterprise Language Model Architecture (ELMAR). Launched in March 2023, ELMAR is smaller than models like GPT-3 and can be run on readily available hardware. Combined with input scanning and Truth Checker AI, ELMAR is able to match larger models for accuracy in narrower enterprise workflows, such as customer Q&amp;A.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of June 2022, Got It AI&rsquo;s customers included crowdfunding website Indiegogo and baby care product brand Frida.
 
 
 In October 2023, Got It AI partnered with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22708">
 NVIDIA
 </a>
 AI Solutions to integrate its ELMAR platform with NVIDIA's AI technologies.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Got It AI has raised a total of USD 22.5 million in funding as of April 2023 across several rounds and emerged from stealth in June 2022. Got It AI&rsquo;s co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Relan has participated in several of the firm&rsquo;s funding rounds.
 
 
 
</div>

Got It AI

<div>
 
 Persado is a &ldquo;motivation&rdquo; platform generating marketing content using machine learning. The platform recognizes different customers based on their reactions to language and uses those insights to generate personalized content that engages across all channels (web, email, ads, etc.) Persado&rsquo;s use cases include:
 
 
 1) Personalization: Identifying what content will motivate each customer to generate personalized messaging across all marketing channels
 
 
 2) Acquisition: Using personalized messaging for higher conversion rates in customer acquisition campaigns
 
 
 3) Onboarding: Personalizing content for each individual and engaging customers from the day of acquisition
 
 
 4) Retention: Keeping customers engaged using personalized messaging for renewals, loyalty programs, and upgrades
 
 
 5) Pre-collections: Promoting on-time payments using encouraging language and providing clear instructions&nbsp;
 
 
 6) Customer service: Encouraging customers to follow self-service prompts
 
 
 In August 2023, Persado launched 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21089">
 &ldquo;Essential Motivation&rdquo;,
 </a>
 to help marketers create emotionally resonant messages, to drive customer engagement and conversion rates. The company unveiled 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27700">
 new features
 </a>
 to this in March 2024, including new product descriptions, segment personalization, brand alignment scores, and web copy optimization, aimed at improving marketing content effectiveness.
 
 
 The Persado platform, based on a proprietary language model, uses a large consumer behavior database of historical interactions (1.2 billion consumers and over 100 billion interactions) to determine what qualities of a message appeal to consumers. Given a set of keywords as input, it leverages deep-learning transformer models to generate messages that are most likely to bring conversions, ensuring the content is in line with a customer&rsquo;s brand using specially trained language models.&nbsp;
 
 
 Over time, Persado uses machine-learning experimentation and decision-making to identify how messages cause each consumer to behave, enabling additional personalization for each future communication. The platform can also directly integrate with customer data platforms (CDPs) to leverage consumer language profiles.
 
 
 Persado also integrates with common marketing tools to fit into marketing teams&rsquo; workflows, providing detailed dashboards and analytics to visualize the impact of each piece of content.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Persado partnered with digital journey continuity platform Namogoo in May 2023, integrating its dynamic motivation platform with Namogoo&rsquo;s customer intent and segmentation database to allow ecommerce stores to dynamically adapt their messaging for individual customers.&nbsp;
 In March 2024, it partnered with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27701">
 Bounteous x Accolite
 </a>
 to leverage Persado's language knowledge base and GenAI tools to enhance commerce and marketing experiences across diverse sectors.
 
 
 Persado&rsquo;s customers as of April 2023 include Vanguard Group, Marks &amp; Spencer, Chase Bank, Emirates NBD, and Vodafone.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Persado raised USD 30 million in a Series C funding round held in April 2016 led by Goldman Sachs. The funds were for enhancing distribution and product development.&nbsp;
 
 
 
</div>

Persado

<div>
 
 Founded in 2022, SellScale is a GenAI-driven sales and marketing outbound platform that streamlines sales communication, which originated during the founders' work on the 
 <a href="https://www.dailydropout.fyi">
 DailyDropout.FYI
 </a>
 newsletter. This led to SellScale&rsquo;s evolution into a comprehensive solution, where sales development representatives (SDRs) utilize it to train GPT-3 and other language models using their top-performing outbound emails. It then customizes these emails using data from CRMs and 40+ data sources, including social media, RSS feeds, and articles. The platform optimizes sales workflows by prioritizing prospects, streamlining follow-ups, enabling multi-threaded engagement (generating leads from multiple contacts), and automating scheduling. It also integrates with tools like Gmail, Outreach.io, Apollo, LinkedIn, and Zapier to enhance workflow efficiency.
 
 
 
 
 The platform claims to improve revenue by 10x while reducing the time required to just 10%.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 The firm's solutions are specialized for SDRs across healthcare, FinTech, technology, and business consulting, where the firm offers specialized targeting and playbooks for the respective industries by leveraging industry-specific data.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In November 2022, the company raised USD 3.4 million in a seed funding round led by Pear Venture Capital.
 
 
 
</div>

SellScale

<div>
 
 DeckRobot is a platform compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint that leverages AI to transform raw slides into enterprise-ready presentations. DeckRobot AI transforms draft slides into professional, on-brand slides by adapting graphics from a vast library of slide examples. Users can apply an unlimited number of styles to any slide deck, including old documents, client materials, or web-sourced slides.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 DeckRobot offers enhancements for individual slides, such as adding approved icons and images, object alignment, slide resizing, and text validation through AI checks. DeckRobot's plugin acts as a time-saving tool for PowerPoint users, reducing manual work and potentially saving up to 80% of working time. The plugin emphasizes creating visually appealing presentations that adhere to company brand guidelines while maintaining content quality.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 DeckRobot collaborates with clients from Fortune 500 companies and small businesses across over 50 countries.
 
 
 
</div>

DeckRobot

Generative AI applications are built on foundation models that are trained using advanced ML models

The technology allows the creation of digital avatars and virtual games

All companies within the space offer a product or service based on generative AI

The technology allows the creation of personalized content

Some applications leverage NLP to train models to process and respond to language-based prompts

Generative AI applications are built on in-house or third-party foundation models

Companies that offer solutions to generate personalized marketing content including blogs, social media posts, ads, emails, website landing pages, product descriptions for ecommerce optimization, and other content for marketing campaigns.

Lavender

Generative AI Applications

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Generative AI tracker: Product updates abound, amidst intensifying regulatory challenges

The rise of robo-copywriters: How generative AI is revolutionizing marketing and sales content creation

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