Benchmark invests in and works alongside entrepreneurs building startups into transformational companies. They focus on early-stage venture investing in mobile, marketplaces, social, and infrastructure and enterprise software. Founded in 1995, the firm has offices in Woodside and San Francisco, California. The firm has been recognized for its commitment to open source and is noted for creating the first equal ownership and compensation structure for its partners. The five equal general partners who take board seats and a hands-on approach to every entrepreneur and company they back, with no junior investment staff. Current general partners are Chetan Puttagunta, Sarah Tavel, Victor Lazarte, Peter Fenton, and Eric Vishria. Benchmark has had 37 exits since beginning of 2011; 14 IPOs and 23 M&As representing a total market value of more than $60 billion. Benchmark’s current portfolio of early-stage venture investments includes private market leaders such as Uber, Snapchat, Tinder, Stitch Fix, Elastic and Cyanogen; recent IPOs and acquisitions such as Twitter, Instagram, Yelp, League of Legends, Jasper, OpenTable, New Relic, Hortonworks, Amplitude, Confluent, GrubHub, Zendesk and Zillow; and franchise companies from Juniper to eBay to Red Hat.

Benchmark

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.

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

Redpoint has partnered with visionary founders to create new markets and redefine existing ones since 1999. The firm invests in startups across seed, early, and growth phases. In total, Redpoint manages $4 billion across multiple funds.

Redpoint

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. provides investment banking, securities, and investment management services, as well as financial services to corporations, financial institutions, governments, and high-net-worth individuals worldwide. Its Investment Banking segment offers financial advisory services, including advisory assignments concerning mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, corporate defense, risk management, and restructurings and spin-offs; and underwriting services comprising public offerings and private placements of a range of securities, loans, and other financial instruments, and derivative transactions. The company’s Institutional Client Services segment provides client execution services, such as fixed income, currency, and commodities client execution related to making markets in interest rate products, credit products, mortgages, currencies, and commodities; and equities related to making markets in equity products, as well as executes and clears institutional client transactions on stock, options, and futures exchanges. This segment also engages in the securities services business providing financing, securities lending, and other brokerage services to institutional clients, including hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and foundations. Its Investing and Lending segment originates longer-term loans; and invests in debt securities, loans, public and private equity securities, real estate, consolidated investment entities, distressed assets, currencies, commodities, and power generation facilities. The company’s investment management segment provides investment products and services, as well as offers wealth advisory services, including portfolio management and financial counseling, and brokerage and other transaction services.

Goldman Sachs

Index Ventures is a venture capital firm based in London, San Francisco, and Geneva, helping entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.  Since 1996, Index has partnered with exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to reshape the world. The companies they’ve started include Adyen, Deliveroo, Dropbox, Farfetch, King, Slack, and Supercell.

Index Ventures

Silicon Valley Bank works with technology, life science, cleantech, venture capital, private equity, and premium wine businesses. SVB provides industry knowledge and connections, financing, treasury management, corporate investment, and international banking services to its clients worldwide through 27 U.S. offices and seven international operations.   Banking innovative companies and exclusive wineries, Silicon Valley Bank’s diverse financial services, knowledge, global network, and world-class service increase its clients’ probability of success. Forbes Magazine ranks SVB among America’s Best Banks, and Fortune Magazine named SVB one of the Best Companies to Work For in 2012.

Silicon Valley Bank

The Employee Stock Option Fund provides current and former employees of venture-backed companies with financial help needed to exercise options and cover associated taxes. It has a due diligence strategy and transaction protocol to evaluate and close transactions very quickly. The ESO Fund provides a new approach to exercising stock options that provides superior ROI potential through leverage and tax optimization. The fund also provides individuals who have already exercised private stock options with partial liquidity on the same terms that allows the owners to recover capital and eliminate downside risk while still retaining the potential upside from the stock.  ESO Fund was formed by Stephen Roberts, Jimmy Lackie, and Scott Chou in 2012.

Employee Stock Option Fund

Notable Capital is named for the founders we invest with, the ideas they pursue, the causes they champion, and the remarkable companies they build. Notable is a U.S.-based venture capital firm focused on early-to-growth stage companies in cloud infrastructure and business and consumer applications across the U.S., Israel, Europe, Latin America, and select go-global opportunities. Notable portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Block, Brightwheel, Drata, Handshake, HashiCorp, Ibotta, Orca Security, Quince, Slack, Slice, StockX, Stori, Vercel, Zendesk, and more.

Notable Capital

Permira is a global investment firm that multiplies the potential of companies and people to build successful businesses with growth ambitions. Founded in 1985, the firm applies a thematic approach across two core asset classes – Private Equity and Credit – with a focus on growth in five key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Healthcare, Services and Climate. Permira employs over 500 people in 16 offices across Europe, North America, and Asia.

Permira

Zendesk

Using AI to mimic and understand human language

Natural Language Processing Tools

PolyAI is a London-based company that develops conversational AI technology for customer service automation. The company's platform combines generative AI with a user experience tailored for enterprise voice channel deployments. PolyAI's voice assistants are designed to understand and engage with each individual's unique voice, making them valuable tools for businesses across industries. The company's technology allows voice assistants to guide customers through complex queries conversationally, addressing the shortage of call center workers. PolyAI's platform includes smart workflows for designing and launching voice experiences, actionable insights unique to voice interactions, and out-of-the-box integrations for quick deployment and improvement of voice assistants.
PolyAI's AI agents can handle calls autonomously during peak times when human agents are unavailable. They have instant access to relevant information and can speak multiple languages. As of May 2024, PolyAI had deployed the world's most multilingual enterprise voice assistant, supporting 12 languages and doing the work of over 1,000 full-time employees for one of its global clients. The company's voice assistants can fully resolve between 40-90% of all incoming calls while increasing customer satisfaction scores by up to 40%. PolyAI's technology aims to improve customer experience, reduce costs, increase productivity, and collect valuable data about customer interactions.

Ensuring the right people access the right resources at the right time

Identity & Access Management

Spera is an identity security posture management platform that acts as a force multiplier for identity teams - helping detect, prioritize, and remediate identity-driven breaches.

PolyAI develops a machine learning platform for conversational artificial intelligence. PolyAI builds enterprise voice assistants that carry on natural conversations with customers to solve their problems. PolyAI's voice assistants understand customers, regardless of what they say or how they say it. Founded in 2017, the company has its headquarters in London, England, United Kingdom, and New York, United States of America.

Spera is an identity security posture management platform that acts as a force multiplier for identity teams - helping detect, prioritize, and remediate identity-driven breaches.

We help online businesses grow with Our best marketing tips and insights. We provide content on digital marketing tools, software, and online marketing education, All in one place

we help coaches, course creators, and trainers to build an online coaching business

Founded in 2009, we have built industry changing technology solutions, including award winning mobile apps and chat applications that transform the digital guest experience. Millions of users around the globe use our technology as guests of the world’s most luxurious hotels and brands.

Seismic specializes in enablement that helps organizations engage customers, enable teams, and ignite revenue growth. Their solutions include sales content management, learning and coaching, buyer engagement, content automation, strategy and planning, and enablement intelligence.

Tymeshift is building the future of workforce management for next generation support teams that run on Zendesk. Beautifully simple scheduling, a forecast you can trust, and real-time reports to deliver better customer service.

Medallia Agent Connect is a company feedback platform for customer service. It offers two core products: Stella Connect, a platform that solicits feedback from customers about their personal interactions with a service agent, and Stella Pulse (formerly Stella Metrics), a ''mystery shopping'' service that measures the customer service performances of numerous companies and then licenses this data to other online merchants and aggregators.

Stella Connect is a customer feedback and quality management platform built specifically for customer service teams. Companies use Stella Connect to drive agent engagement and to measure and improve their service performance.

GoodData provides the platform and expertise for enterprises to create Smart Business Applications that harness your existing data to help you automate, recommend and take better business actions faster and with more reliability. They drive competitive value, performance, and profit by significantly enhancing the data-driven business processes across the enterprise and its business ecosystem by bringing analytics to the point-of-work. Their clients include enterprises like Penton that need to deliver revenue-generating data products to their clients and software companies like Zendesk that market their own Smart Business Applications using GoodData. It was founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Fast Forward is an accelerator for social tech nonprofits. Its three-month accelerator provides a philanthropic grant, intros to mentors, a curated curriculum, and a community.

Zendesk is a customer service platform that develops software to empower organizations and customer relationships. It empowers organizations to improve customer engagement and better understand their customers. Zendesk products are easy to use and implement. They give organizations the flexibility to move quickly, focus on innovation, and scale with their growth. Zendesk serves more than 150,000 customers across hundreds of industries in over 30 languages. Zendesk was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

<div> Zendesk is a customer service platform that develops software to empower organizations and customer relationships. It empowers organizations to improve customer engagement and better understand their customers. Zendesk products are easy to use and implement. They give organizations the flexibility to move quickly, focus on innovation, and scale with their growth. Zendesk serves more than 150,000 customers across hundreds of industries in over 30 languages. Zendesk was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. </div>

Zendesk Launches Flexible Pricing for Customized AI Journeys

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

Sales Engagement Platforms

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.

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

Automation to improve business efficiency

Workflow Automation Platforms

Platforms that automate accounting and finance operations such as accounts receivable, reconciliation, transaction matching, financial close management, and intercompany financial management

Software to streamline and automate sales, marketing, and customer relationship management processes, such as qualifying leads, renewal, sales forecasts, pipeline tracking, and identifying overdue closing dates

Platforms that govern repetitive HR and admin processes such as recruitment management, employee onboarding, surveys, HRIS records, and assigning buddies

Platforms to automate operational workflows such as task monitoring and flows, streamlining facility requests, and supply chain management

Platforms that specialize in automating functions other than the four identified segments. These include platforms that automate IT, compliance, claims processing, cybersecurity, and product development

Platforms that offer a range of workflow automation and RPA bots that are not specifically targeted at any business function

Companies which utilize GenAI as a core part of their product offering for workflow automation

Harnessing tech to provide exceptional customer experiences

Customer Service Platforms

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

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 
 At its global conference, Relate, customer service platform Zendesk unveiled a new customer service automation solution powered by AI, named Zendesk AI.
 The AI offering includes autonomous AI agents able to interact with customers automatically, handle inquiries, and leverage workflow automation tools. In addition, its GenAI copilot uses historical conversation data to support human agents in enhancing customer interactions. 
 Zendesk AI features personalized intents for a superior understanding of customer requirements and GenAI tools can effectively manage knowledge bases. AI reporting is available for monitoring key performance indicators. According to Zendesk, the tool is capable of automating nearly 80% of customer service requests, potentially reducing resolution times by 30%.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 &nbsp;While not explicitly disclosed, the launch of Zendesk AI seems to have directly resulted from the company’s <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/27553"> recent acquisition of Ultimate </a> , a GenAI-powered customer service automation platform. At the time of the acquisition, the company stated its plans to integrate Ultimate’s AI agent technology into its platform and expand its AI capabilities. Moreover, the launch is in line with a wider technological trend of leading players deploying GenAI-powered automation tools during the past month.

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