Techstars is a global platform that provides investment and innovation. Through the Techstars Worldwide Entrepreneur Network, founders and their teams connect with other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors, community leaders, and corporate partners who will help their companies grow. Techstars operates four divisions: Techstars Mentorship-Driven Accelerator Program supercharges success and Techstars Startup Programs inspire, educate, and connect entrepreneurs. Techstars Venture Capital Fund invests in innovative and disruptive companies. Techstars Corporate Innovation Partnerships help brands create products and services. Techstars' accelerator portfolio includes more than 1,000 companies with a market cap of $8.1 billion.

Techstars

Right Side Capital Management is a venture capital firm that helps startups build their company. It invests exclusively in the pre-seed round of technology startups and makes 75-100 investment per year. The firms prefers to invest in diversified technology sectors such as the internet and cloud companies. RSCM was established in 2010 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Right Side Capital Management

NUMA is an innovation hub which brings together under one umbrella three main activities: community events, startup acceleration, and innovation programs for corporates.Whether an idea is just beginning to bloom or vested and almost ready for market, NUMA provides methodology and mentorship to individuals, communities, startups and large companies.NUMA is also a co-working space for entrepreneurs, academics, SMEs, and more. This space enables its clients to accelerate companies, communicate and create, experiment, co-work, and hold events.NUMA is based in Paris, Moscow, and Bangalore.

NUMA

Kima Ventures is one of the world's most active early-stage investors, investing in 2 to 3 startups per week all over the world; providing founders with funding, network, and support for them to reach the next steps of their journey. The firm invests from seed to Series A, mostly as lead investor but also working alongside other investors; backing ambitious founders who work hard to build awesome things that more and more people use everyday. The company helps them to build a great team, to learn very quickly, to keep the right focus and execute towards growth. Kima takes pride of itself in working side-by-side with entrepreneurs. They claim to understand that fundraising is only one step in the company’s journey, that’s why they take quick decisions and make the fundraising process as smooth as possible so the founders can get back to the work of building their business. Kima considers itself not only an investor, but a network of founders and experts sharing a pay it forward mindset. Headquartered in Paris with an office in London, the company was founded and backed by Xavier Niel, founder of Iliad and supporter of entrepreneurs through such projects as 42, Station F and 101projets. Over the last 5 years Kima has invested in over 400 startups in 24 different countries.

Kima Ventures

Alive Ideas is a team of french entrepreneurs trying to help ideas to go (a)live.  We are passionnate about developing ideas changing habits or eco-systems: news, shopping, leisure, content, mobile...  We have worked together for more than 15 years when we started Cyrealis, a French online media company based on the success of Clubic.com (leading tech-related online magazine) and Achetezfacile.com (compararison shopping), and the acquisition and growth of 4 other portals: Jeuxvideo.fr (videogame), Neteco (ebusiness), Mobinaute (mobile) and OZAP (entertainment).  After merging Cyrealis with the digital division of the M6 Group (#2 French private TV channel / subsidiary of RTL Group), we also launched Deco.fr (home-related portal) and Turbo.fr (automotive portal). After these successful launchs, M6 websites hit 15 million Unique Users (Nielsen//Netratings 10/2010).  While working for such a diversified group, we helped on our spare time several other business to grow, from a local brick-and-mortar restaurant to a global music-industry player.  In 2011, we decided to leave M6 Group to start a new adventure: alive ideas.  The mission of Alive Ideas is right there in our name: we bring ideas to life. To achieve this mission, we seek passionate teams with fun or revolutionnary ideas, and try to help them with some of the ingredients of success: business tips and smart money. We also develop our own ideas (such as Mapado.com), gathering code-gurus and marketing genius together.

Alive Ideas

Amplify Partners invests in technical founders solving technical problems for the enterprise. They invest in early-stage companies pioneering novel applications in machine intelligence and computer science.

Amplify Partners

Antecedent Ventures is a venture capital fund that focuses on investments in seed stage enterprise software startups. Companies that focus on infrastructure, platform or vertical applications are potentially a good fit.

Antecedent Ventures

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.

SaaStr began in 2012 as a simple attempt via a WordPress blog, together with a few answers on Quora, to help share back Jason M. Lemkin’s learnings of going from $0 to $100m ARR with the next generation of great SaaS and B2B entrepreneurs. It has since gone on to become perhaps the largest web community of SaaS founders and entrepreneurs, with over 2.5M views per month across the web, and over 50 million+ views on Quora.  The SaaStr Annual has become the world's largest non-vendor B2B conference.  The core SaaStr long-form content first appears here on www.saastr.com, and then on Quora, as well as via syndication in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Enterprise Irregulars, and other leading media.  Forbes named SaaStr one of the Top 100 blogs for entrepreneurs, and Inc. named SaaStr one of The 50 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs.

SaaStr

We invest in smart people solving hard problems, often difficult scientific or engineering problems. Importantly, we believe the brightest and most creative problem solvers seek the hardest and most interesting problems, and gathering the best technical talent is a major competitive advantage.  Advances in cloud and other computing technologies radically reduce the costs of starting and running new businesses, creating opportunities for outsized returns. We invest in teams we believe in and our experience suggests that finding good founding teams and leaving them in place tends to produce higher returns overall.  As a corollary, we resist shackling a company to its original business model. Businesses really do evolve over time and changing models in the early years is anything but a sign of weakness. We do not expect that the first business model for a company will be the final or best business model and do not see evolution as a negative. The most powerful minds are the ones that can be changed.  We believe that substantially all of our investments should be directed to companies with an audacious vision seeking enormous markets. So, we will continue to invest in very talented entrepreneurs who are pursuing ambitious, challenging tasks. We will treat them with respect and hope for the best.

Kortschak Investments L.P.

Sapphire is a global software venture capital firm with more than $11 billion in AUM and team members across Austin, London, Menlo Park and San Francisco. For over a decade, Sapphire has partnered with visionary management teams and venture funds to back companies of consequence. Since its founding, Sapphire has invested in more than 170 companies globally resulting in more than 30 Public Listings and 45 acquisitions. The firm’s investment strategies — Sapphire Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport — are focused on scaling companies and venture funds, elevating them to become category leaders. Sapphire’s Portfolio Growth team of experienced operators delivers a strategic blend of value-add services, tools and resources designed to support portfolio company leaders as they scale.

Sapphire Ventures

Greycroft is a venture capital firm that focuses on technology start-ups and investments in the Internet and mobile markets. With offices in two of the most important business hubs in the world, New York and Los Angeles Greycroft uniquely positioned to serve entrepreneurs who have chosen us as their partners. The firm leverages an extensive network of media and technology industry connections to help entrepreneurs gain visibility, build strategic relationships, bring their products to market, and build successful businesses.  Greycroft manages in excess of $1 billion and has made over 200 investments since its inception in leading companies including Acorns, App Annie, Bird, Botkeeper, Bright Health, Boxed, Braintree, Buddy Media, Everything But The House, Extreme Reach, Huffington Post, Icertis, JW Player, Maker Studios, Plated, Scopely, Shipt, TheRealReal, Thrive Market, Trunk Club, Venmo, WideOrbit, and Yeahka. Greycroft has adopted the Diversity Term Sheet Rider.

Greycroft

Alven Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm with over $500 million under management. Alven backs primarily ambitious French and French-related entrepreneurs in the digital technology space. Alven’s sectors of interest include notably AI, data management platforms, Saas, security solutions, as well as disruptive consumer models with a particular focus on marketplaces and web brands.

Alven

FJ Labs is a stage-agnostic investment firm that focuses on marketplaces and consumer-facing startups. Their investments are seed and series A. The investment range of the company is $50,000 to $5,000,000. It invests in Alibaba Group, Beepi, BrightRoll, Betterment, Adore Me, and Earnest.

FJ Labs

WiL (World Innovation Lab) is a venture capital firm that partners with leading global corporations and government entities in Japan and Asia. With offices in Palo Alto, California, and Tokyo, the firm’s mission is to serve as a bridge between startups and corporations in the United States and Asia, with a particular focus on Japan. WiL supports its portfolio companies by establishing corporate partnerships that enable U.S. and European startups to scale globally, and Japanese startups to innovate and globalize. WiL invests in emerging technology spanning fintech, insurtech, automation and productivity, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, developer tools, health tech and sustainability. Notable WiL investments that have exited to public markets from Fund I and Fund II include Asana, Mercari, Raksul, Wise and Auth0 — whose acquisition by Okta was completed in May 2021. WiL also invests in exceptional venture funds, and supports its LPs in corporate venture investment efforts. WiL also works with its corporate investors on evolving their own innovation capabilities through new business creation, partnerships with leading startups, and organizational culture change. WiL acts as the bridge between startups and corporates across key innovation hubs around the globe in driving growth - starting with Japan and the US.

WiL (World Innovation Lab)

Shopify is the entrepreneurship company and Shopify Ventures is where founders thrive. We invest in mavericks who possess that rare technical DNA, and we look to enable these visionary founders through our vibrant ecosystem. On a mission to help scale bold ideas from hello world to IPO, we are building a 100-year venture platform to help make commerce, developer experience, and entrepreneurship better for everyone. Learn more: https://shopify.vc/portfolio

Shopify Ventures

Worklife Ventures is the first venture capital firm designed for the new era of builders, creators, and individual contributors.  At the forefront of Worklife’s narrative is the idea that the future of work will be the end of traditional jobs and anyone can start their own business or creative empire from anywhere.

Worklife

Shopify is a cloud-based, multi-channel commerce platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses. Merchants can use the software to design, set up, and manage their stores across multiple sales channels, including web, mobile, social media, marketplaces, brick-and-mortar locations, and pop-up shops. The platform also provides merchants with a powerful back-office and a single view of their business. Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services including marketing, customer engagement, payments, and shipping tools to simplify the process of running an online store for small merchants. They launched an application programming interface (API) platform and App Store that allows developers to create applications for Shopify online stores and then sell them on the Shopify App Store. The Shopify platform was engineered for reliability and scale, making enterprise-level technology available to businesses of all sizes. Shopify currently powers over 800,000 businesses in approximately 175 countries and is trusted by brands such as Tesla, Red Bull, Nestle, GE, Kylie Cosmetics, and many more.

Shopify

Transpose Platform Management seeks out innovative companies and invests in tomorrow's category-defining leaders.

Transpose Platform Management

The SaaStr Fund is a $70m venture fund that focuses on early-ish stage investments exclusively in SaaS/enterprise/B2B start-ups.  They look to invest typically once you have at least 10 Unaffiliated Customers, and we invest from $500k to $4m (occasionally a little more or less), depending on stage.

SaaStr Fund

Horsley Bridge Partners is a global private equity fund of funds.  The firm invests primarily with early-stage venture capital teams and smaller growth buyout partnerships.  Based in San Francisco, HBP also has offices in London and Beijing.

Horsley Bridge Partners

Gorgias

Gorgias is a one-of-a-kind customer service platform specifically designed for ecommerce businesses to deliver effortless customer service at every stage of growth. With cutting-edge automation and AI capabilities, Gorgias revolutionizes how online stores interact with their customers by providing efficient and personalized support across email, voice, SMS, live chat, and social media channels. Founded in 2015, Gorgias began as a two-person team and has grown to more than 250 employees and eight offices in San Francisco, New York, Charlotte, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Paris, Lisbon, and Sydney. As a certified B Corporation, Gorgias is proud to be a leader in sustainable and equitable workplace practices. Today, Gorgias serves 12,000+ merchants in the ecommerce space, including Steve Madden, Glossier, BruMate, and TUSHY.

Gorgias is a customer service platform designed specifically for ecommerce businesses. Founded in 2015 by Romain Lapeyre and Alex Plugaru, Gorgias centralizes customer support across multiple channels including email, live chat, phone, SMS, and social media into a single interface. The platform integrates with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce to provide customer service agents with full order and customer data alongside support tickets.

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Gorgias is a customer service platform designed specifically for ecommerce businesses. Founded in 2015 by Romain Lapeyre and Alex Plugaru, Gorgias centralizes customer support across multiple channels including email, live chat, phone, SMS, and social media into a single interface. The platform integrates with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce to provide customer service agents with full order and customer data alongside support tickets.
Gorgias utilizes automation and artificial intelligence to improve efficiency, allowing merchants to set up macros and rules to automatically handle common inquiries. The platform's AI can detect customer intent and sentiment to route tickets appropriately. Gorgias also provides analytics on support performance and revenue generated through customer service interactions. As of August 2022, Gorgias served over 10,000 online stores and 200 million end customers. The company has raised multiple rounds of funding, reaching a valuation of USD 710 million after its USD 30 million Series C round in August 2022.

<div>
 
 RingCentral is a leading provider of cloud-based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) solutions. The company's flagship product, RingCentral MVP (now rebranded as RingEX), offers a comprehensive suite of communication and collaboration tools including voice calls, video meetings, team messaging, SMS, and fax capabilities. RingCentral's platform is designed to enable businesses of all sizes to communicate effectively across multiple devices and locations. The company utilizes a multi-cloud, multi-network architecture to ensure high availability, with a 99.999% uptime SLA. As of December 2021, RingCentral served customers across various industries including financial services, education, healthcare, and technology. The platform integrates with over 300 popular business applications to streamline workflows. RingCentral's solutions are built on open standards and utilize security measures such as TLS and SRTP encryption to protect customer data. In 2021, RingCentral reported annual revenue of USD 1.6 billion, primarily generated through subscription-based pricing models for its cloud services.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 
 RingCentral has established partnerships with major telecom providers and technology companies to expand its reach. The company counts organizations like Toyota, Lufthansa, Salesforce, eBay, and the Golden State Warriors among its customers. In 2024, RingCentral introduced RingSense AI, an AI-powered assistant that provides real-time note-taking, conversation insights, and automated message writing and translation capabilities. RingCentral has also developed RingCX, a native AI-first contact center solution that integrates with its unified communications platform. The company's solutions are recognized by industry analysts, with RingCentral receiving leader designations from firms like Gartner, Frost &amp; Sullivan, and IDC MarketScape.
 
</div>

RingCentral

Aircall is a cloud-based phone system and call center software founded in 2014 in Paris, France. The company provides businesses with a virtual call center solution that integrates seamlessly with popular CRM and helpdesk tools. Aircall's platform enables companies to set up professional phone systems quickly, manage calls and contacts efficiently, and analyze call data to improve performance. Key features include auto-attendants, call routing, contact center management, advanced analytics, and integrations with tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Slack.
As of 2024, Aircall serves over 13,000 companies worldwide and has offices in New York, Paris, Sydney, Madrid, Berlin, and London. The company's cloud-based solution eliminates the need for complex hardware installations, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes, from small teams to large enterprises. Aircall's platform is designed to be accessible, transparent, and collaborative, allowing for easy management of phone systems across distributed teams.
Aircall offers three main pricing tiers: Essentials, Professional, and Custom. The Essentials plan starts at USD 30 per user per month when billed annually, with a minimum of three users. This plan includes features like unlimited calls in the US and Canada, basic integrations, and call recording. The Professional plan, priced at USD 50 per user per month when billed annually, adds advanced features such as Salesforce integration, call monitoring, and advanced analytics. Custom plans are available for larger organizations with specific needs.
In June 2022, Aircall announced that it had reached USD 100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), achieving "centaur" status - a term used to describe companies with USD 100 million or more in ARR. This milestone came just one year after Aircall reached unicorn status with a valuation of over USD 1 billion. The company's growth has been fueled by increasing demand for cloud-based communication solutions, particularly as businesses adapt to remote and hybrid work environments.

Aircall

Acquire is a unified customer engagement platform that enables businesses to provide efficient, real-time customer communications across multiple channels. The platform combines several key features including live chat, chatbots, co-browsing, video calls, knowledge base software, and a shared inbox. Acquire aims to help companies deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences that modern customers demand without requiring complex IT infrastructure.
The platform allows businesses to respond to customer queries from a single dashboard, providing a consolidated view of all customer interactions. Acquire's live chat functionality works across devices and browsers to offer on-demand support during business hours. Its no-code chatbot builder allows companies to create custom workflows for handling repetitive queries 24/7. The co-browsing feature enables agents to view and interact with customers' browsers in real-time without requiring any downloads. Acquire also includes built-in knowledge base software to organize self-help resources that can be integrated with live chat.
One of Acquire's key differentiators is its video chat capability, which allows face-to-face customer interactions with one-click initiation and no installation required. The platform also provides analytics to measure customer data and gain deeper insights. Acquire is designed to integrate with existing IT resources and offers over 50 integrations with sales, support, social, and analytics tools.
Key customers and partnerships
The Dufresne Group, a Canadian home furnishing retailer, successfully implemented Acquire's video chat feature to reduce furniture repair costs and improve online customer engagement. When faced with pandemic restrictions, the company expanded its use of Acquire to facilitate virtual furniture sales through video tours and co-browsing, allowing them to pivot their business model without additional investment or training.

Acquire

CloudTalk is a provider of AI-powered calling solutions and call center software for modern businesses. Founded in 2016 in Bratislava, Slovakia, the company offers a cloud-based platform that helps sales, customer service, and marketing teams connect with clients more efficiently. CloudTalk's VoIP business calling solution automates workflows and provides managers with built-in analytics to optimize performance and increase calling efficiency. The platform features over 70 features and integrates with leading CRMs and helpdesk tools, centralizing and processing all calling data to allow businesses to customize their customer experience.
CloudTalk's technology includes its own virtual 'phone suite' that integrates with CRMs and support tools, providing key information to customer service and sales teams during calls and enabling easy updates afterward. This capability is estimated to save users 2-3 minutes per call. The company has also built its own infrastructure, giving it better control over voice quality. CloudTalk's recent focus has been on enhancing its AI-powered cloud phone system and contact center solutions, incorporating features such as AI-powered dialers, conversational intelligence, speech recognition, call summarization, automated note-taking, and sentiment analysis.
Key customers and partnerships
CloudTalk reported serving over 4,000 sales and customer-facing teams across more than 100 countries, powering more than 400 million customer conversations. The company primarily attracts small to medium-sized businesses with an average of 10 to 3,000 users, but also counts larger organizations among its clients. Notable customers include Glovo, OYO, Fujitsu, Tier, DHL, and Nokia. CloudTalk's solution is used across various industries, with a particular focus on financial services, where it helps businesses scale their communication capabilities alongside their growing client base.

CloudTalk

Talkdesk is a leading cloud-based contact center software provider founded in 2011. The company offers an end-to-end solution designed to help businesses improve customer experiences and agent productivity. Talkdesk's platform combines enterprise scalability with consumer simplicity, delivering advantages in speed, agility, reliability, and security.
Talkdesk's core offering is the CX Cloud, an AI-powered contact center solution that supports omnichannel interactions across voice, email, chat, SMS, and social media. Key features include intelligent call routing, interactive voice response (IVR), workforce management, quality management, real-time and historical reporting, and integrations with popular CRM systems. The platform leverages artificial intelligence throughout, including for agent assistance, sentiment analysis, and automated quality management.
In 2022, Talkdesk introduced industry-specific solutions called Talkdesk Industry Experience Clouds. These are purpose-built contact center platforms for sectors like retail, financial services, and healthcare. They come pre-configured with industry-specific workflows, AI models, and integrations to accelerate deployment and ROI for companies in those verticals.
Talkdesk places a strong emphasis on ease of use and rapid deployment. The company claims its solutions can be set up in minutes rather than months. The platform is designed to be intuitive for agents, supervisors, and administrators alike. Talkdesk also offers extensive customization options and open APIs for businesses that need to tailor the solution to their specific needs.
Key customers and partnerships
Talkdesk serves customers across various industries, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. The company states it has "thousands" of customers worldwide, including Fortune 500 enterprises. Talkdesk has over 60 pre-built integrations with platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and Zendesk. In July 2022, Talkdesk announced a partnership with Cognizant to bring its Industry Experience Clouds to more enterprises globally and provide implementation support.

Talkdesk

Platforms offering centralized customer interaction and support services via phone, email, live chat, or social media

Platforms that gather feedback from various channels, such as surveys, reviews, and social media,  to gain insights, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to improve customer experiences

Platforms that offer a centralized repository for organizing information, resources, and documentation, allowing users to access relevant self-service resources related to a specific subject or domain

Platforms for managing customer inquiries, complaints, and technical issues by streamlining ticketing, facilitating communication, and tracking request status

Platforms that enable real-time communication between customers and support agents by offering chat interfaces, file-sharing capabilities, and visitor monitoring

Platforms that provide a comprehensive software solution that consolidates various tools and functionalities, including ticketing, case management, knowledge base, live chat, social media management, self-service options, and analytics

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

AI/ML improves customer service by automating tasks, enhancing response times, and personalized experiences.

Leverages customer data, such as past interactions, purchase history, and preferences, to personalize the experience.

Generative AI automates responses, analyze data, and provide personalized solutions for customer feedback and help-desk.

Supports hybrid working model by providing remote access, collaboration, omnichannel support, self-service options, and analytics.

NLP improves communication and support by analyzing customer inquiries and feedback, enhancing relevance.

Gorgias

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