Pear is an early-stage venture fund founded by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson. Their co-founding managers have historically seeded very early stage tech start-ups such as Doordash, Guardant Health, Gusto, Viz.ai, Dropbox, Lending Club, Zoosk, Addepar, Path and many others. Their motto is simple: they invest in exceptional founders who are building amazing companies. They utilize every resource they have to assist their founders and entrepreneurs shape the future.

Pear VC

S28 Capital is an early-stage venture fund with $170M under management.  We're a team of founders and early startup employees.  The investing team helped build companies such as PagerDuty and Playdom and also invested in companies such as Zoom and Coupang.  Some of our investments include Plangrid, Mattermost, Rippling, Reflektive, Social Construct, and Perpetua.

S28 Capital

Founded in 2016, Fifth Wall, a Certified B Corporation, is the largest venture capital firm focused on technology for the global real estate industry. With approximately $3.0 billion in commitments and capital under management, Fifth Wall connects many of the world's largest owners and operators of real estate with the entrepreneurs who are redefining the future of the Built World. Fifth Wall is backed by a global mix of more than 90 strategic limited partners (LPs) from more than 15 countries, including BNP Paribas Real Estate, British Land, CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Host Hotels & Resorts, Kimco Realty Corporation, Lennar, Lowe's Home Improvement, Marriott International, MetLife Investment Management, Related Companies, Starwood Capital, Toll Brothers, and others. Fifth Wall believes this consortium represents one of the largest groups of potential partners in the global Built World ecosystem, which can result in transformational investments and collaborations with promising portfolio companies. For more information about Fifth Wall, its LPs, and portfolio, visit www.fifthwall.com.

Fifth Wall

Energize Capital is a global alternative investment manager focused on accelerating digital transformation in energy and sustainability. Founded in 2016, Energize has funded 21 companies to date and is backed by strategic and institutional LPs including CDPQ, Invenergy, Schneider Electric, General Electric, Caterpillar, and more. With an unmatched depth and breadth of industry and operational expertise, Energize works in partnership with its portfolio companies to realize their full potential from early commercialization to growth scaling and into the public markets.

Energize Capital

ICONIQ Capital is a privately-held investment firm that serves some influential families and organizations. The firm is a trusted advisor and thought partner, facilitating meaningful strategic relationships across investment opportunities, family governance, and global impact. ICONIQ provides financial advisory and family office services, and manages direct investments across asset classes, with a specific focus on technology growth equity, venture capital, middle-market buyout, and real estate.

ICONIQ Capital

ICONIQ Growth partners with exceptional entrepreneurs and leaders who drive global impact and change. The firm is inspired by visionaries defining the future of their industries by building company cultures that endure. ICONIQ Growth has a unique investment platform harnesses the power of ICONIQ Capital’s vibrant ecosystem of founders, pioneers, and business leaders with the goal of delivering tangible value and amplifying our portfolio companies’ success from early growth stage to IPO and beyond. ICONIQ Growth’s portfolio of innovators includes Adyen, AirBnB, Alibaba, Alteryx, Automattic, BambooHR, Braze, Chime, Collibra, Coupa, Datadog, Docusign, Gitlab, Marqeta, Miro, Procore, Red Ventures, Relativity, ServiceTitan, Snowflake, Sprinklr, Truckstop, Uber, Wolt, and Zoom, among others.

ICONIQ Growth

Coatue is a privately owned hedge fund sponsor. The firm invests in the public equity markets globally focusing on investments in technology, media, and telecommunications in addition to other sectors. It employs a long or short strategy to make its investments.

Coatue

Lux Capital manages over $5 billion in assets focused on founding, seed, early-stage, and growth investments at the intersection of technology and the sciences. Lux takes an active role in helping entrepreneurs build successful businesses in high-growth sectors. Its investment team has built over 20 companies from scratch. Lux's investment strategy ensures portfolio companies are better connected, have a deeper insight, and command industry leadership faster than their competitors.

Lux Capital

Emerson Collective is an organization dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential. Established and led by Laurene Powell Jobs, we center our work on education, immigration reform, the environment, and other social justice initiatives. We use a wide range of tools and strategies—partnering with entrepreneurs and experts, parents and policymakers, advocates and administrators—to develop and execute innovative solutions that will spur change and promote equality.

Emerson Collective

Aurora Solar

Aurora Solar develops solar industry software. It develops cloud-based software, that enables solar PV engineering design, provides workflow management functionality, and facilitates sales and customer acquisition for solar installers and financiers.  Christopher Hopper and Samuel Adeyemo founded Aurora Solar in 2013. It has its headquarters in San Francisco, California.

<div>Aurora Solar is a solar energy project design and sales software provider that offers a sales workflow automation platform<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8259">(launched in February 2022)</a>to streamline the solar designing process and proposal tools. The new Aurora Sell suite provides 1) Sales Mode, a guided workflow on project details, 3D modeling, and integrated payment solutions that allow sales teams to respond to customer feedback in real time and 2) Contract Manager, which streamlines the process of closing a deal with features like esignature and document tracking. The firm also offers “Lead Capture AI,” a sales intelligence tool where customers can leverage proprietary machine learning (ML) and building technology to deliver 3D solar designs in 30 seconds, delivering a personalized user experience. Aurora Solar<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11727?industryIds=27">unveiled AI solutions for design and sales teams</a>in July 2022, allowing sales representatives to generate quotes and for design teams to scale the design process with 3D project modeling. As of February 2022, the platform designed more than seven million solar energy projects and had served 5,000+ solar organizations. Its customers include SunPower, Momentum Solar, Black & Veatch, Blue Raven Solar, Zolar, Sunpro Solar, Gippsland Solar, and Namaste Solar. </div>

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

Sales Engagement Platforms

Aurora Solar Unveils HelioScope Similar Obstruction Detection Feature

<div>
 
 Aurora Solar is a solar energy project design and sales software provider that offers a sales workflow automation platform 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8259">
 (launched in February 2022)
 </a>
 to streamline the solar designing process and proposal tools. The new Aurora Sell suite provides 1) Sales Mode, a guided workflow on project details, 3D modeling, and integrated payment solutions that allow sales teams to respond to customer feedback in real time and 2) Contract Manager, which streamlines the process of closing a deal with features like esignature and document tracking. The firm also offers “Lead Capture AI,” a sales intelligence tool where customers can leverage proprietary machine learning (ML) and building technology to deliver 3D solar designs in 30 seconds, delivering a personalized user experience. Aurora Solar 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11727?industryIds=27">
 unveiled AI solutions for design and sales teams
 </a>
 in July 2022, allowing sales representatives to generate quotes and for design teams to scale the design process with 3D project modeling. 
 As of February 2022, the platform designed more than seven million solar energy projects and had served 5,000+ solar organizations. Its customers include SunPower, Momentum Solar, Black & Veatch, Blue Raven Solar, Zolar, Sunpro Solar, Gippsland Solar, and Namaste Solar. 
 
 
 The firm is positioned as an “all-in-one” solution for solar energy projects, providing tools for both design and sales teams within a single platform. The firm also claimed that its sales intelligence tool results in a 181% increase in lead generation compared to traditional systems. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In February 2022, the company raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8786">
 USD 200 million in a Series D
 </a>
 funding round co-led by existing investors Coatue and Energize Ventures. The funding follows its USD 250 million in a Series C funding round in May 2021, valuing Aurora Solar at USD 4 billion. 
 
</div>

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. As of June 2021, the company has more than 800 employees globally across Seattle, San Francisco, and new global offices in London and Prague.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’s “Amplify AI suite”, 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 “Outreach Kaia”, 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. In May 2024, the company launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29898">Smart Account Plans, </a>a new feature in its Sales Execution Platform designed to help sales teams engage, manage, and increase the number of accounts.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 “Outreach Commit,” a new forecasting tool under Outreach’s suite of products.Key customers and partnershipsIn 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 “Outreach Data Sharing,” which enables organisations to connect Outreach's datasets with other enterprise data and improve sales cycle.Funding and financialsIn 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.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.

Outreach

<div>
 
 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. 
 
 
 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. 
 
 
 In February 2022, the company announced the launch of its four tier 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8630">
 Technology Partner Program
 </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">
 Salesloft Rhythm
 </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. 
 
 
 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.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 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;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 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. 
 
 
 In August 2022, the firm reported that annual recurring revenue (ARR) surpassed USD 100 million in Q2 2021.
 
</div>

Salesloft

<div>
 
 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. 
 
 
 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;
 
 
 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.
 
 
 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. 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 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.
 
 
 Funding and financials 
 
 
 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. 
 
</div>

People.ai

<div>
 
 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.  
 
 
 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.
 
 
 Guided selling capabilities were introduced in September 2020 and made accessible through its Salesforce CRM integration.
 
 
 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.
 
</div>

Revenue.io

<div>
 
 Apollo.io (formerly known as ZenProspect) is a sales intelligence and sales workflow automation platform which offers an end-to-end offering featuring a native lead database with over 200 million contacts from over 25 million companies. The platform offers prospect routing,&nbsp; leads scoring, multi-channel campaigns, and analytics capabilities. As of March 2022, Apollo.io had over 1 million total users and around 16,000 paying customers consisting of startups as well as&nbsp; Fortune 500 companies including WeWork, Peloton, and Colliers.
 
 
 Funding and financials 
 
 
 In August 2023, the 
 company
 raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21434">
 USD 100 million in a Series D funding
 </a>
 round led by Bain Capital Ventures, bringing the company&rsquo;s post-money valuation to USD 1.6 billion. The funds were expected to drive platform development and workforce expansion, with a goal to double employee count by 2025. It also reported a revenue growth of 9x over the last two years. 
 The company was also a part of the Y Combinator (YC) Winter 2016 batch. Apollo.io generated USD 1 million in annual recurring revenue at YC and was profitable immediately. 
 
</div>

Apollo.io

All in one platform which offers a variety of tools for sales collaboration and for optimizing the entire sales process.

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

Tools used for automating routine sales functions to improve the efficiency of sales teams.

Tools for preparing & automating sales campaigns via email, SMS & other channels.

Tools for discovering & building customer and company databases to generate sales leads.

Tools for discovering & analyzing customer interactions for improving customer success.

Tools for preparing sales content & coaching sales teams to improve performance.

Tools used to continuously  improve the product experience by understanding customer pain points.

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

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 Aurora Solar has reduced its workforce by 20%, resulting in approximately 100 employees being let go. This move is a result of the company not meeting its growth targets in the previous year. Factors contributing to this include macroeconomic challenges within the solar industry, like increasing interest rates and alterations to California's net metering rules that have decreased the payments received by homeowners for their electricity.
</div>

Aurora Solar

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