Atlanta Ventures empowers SaaS entrepreneurs to achieve their potential through community, content, and capital. It also has an in-house Studio where they co-found companies with passionate entrepreneurs to solve massive problems. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Atlanta Ventures

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

Emergence is a venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage enterprise companies. Its mission is to be the most valuable partner to the companies changing the way the world works. In 2017, the firm was named Venture Firm of the Year by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Business Insider named Emergence one of the Top 10 Best Performing Venture Funds that launched at the turn of the decade, and posted returns as high as 50%. The firm’s investments include companies such as Salesforce (CRM), Veeva Systems (VEEV), Box (BOX), Zoom (ZM), SuccessFactors (SFSF, acquired by SAP), Yammer (acquired by Microsoft), Zoom, ServiceMax (acquired by GE) and Intact (acquired by Sage). For more information on Emergence, visit http://www.emcap.com and follow @emergencecap.

Emergence

Storm Ventures is a $600m (TAM) VC firm 100% focused solely on early-stage enterprise investments.  We've been founders ourselves, of enterprise companies including Airespace (acquired by Cisco) and EchoSign (acquired by Adobe).  We've had to go without pay as CEOs ourselves to make payroll.  We've gone from $0 to $100m in ARR and lived all the stages in between.  We've here to help, and add some strategic capital and insights.  And not be in the way when we're not needed.

Storm Ventures

TechOperators is a venture capital firm that invests in growth stage software companies. It also provides constructive, strategic, operating, and networking support to its portfolio companies. The firm is specifically focused on opportunities to innovate and transform solutions for cyber security, enterprise productivity, cloud computing, and IT infrastructure. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, TechOperators was founded in 2008.

TechOperators

High Alpha, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, is a B2B SaaS venture studio. High Alpha Studio conceives, launches, and scales B2B SaaS companies by providing a blend of studio services, including design, finance, talent, marketing, brand, and go-to-market. High Alpha Capital invests in High Alpha Studio companies and emerging B2B SaaS companies. The combination of High Alpha Studio and High Alpha Capital represents a new model for entrepreneurship — the venture studio model — that seeks to help companies reduce friction, increase velocity, and achieve enterprise scale.

High Alpha

Insight Partners is a global software investor that partners with growth-stage technology and software companies. Insight has a deep focus in Fintech, Cybersecurity, AI/ML, DevOps, and Healthcare sectors. Across their people and their portfolio, they encourage a culture around a core belief growth equals opportunity. As of December 31, 2022, the firm has over $75B in regulatory assets under management. Insight Partners has invested in more than 750 companies worldwide and has seen over 55 portfolio companies achieve an IPO.

Insight Partners

LinkedIn is a professional network that connects professionals to enhance productivity and success. With a diversified revenue model that includes solutions for talent, marketing, sales, and premium subscriptions, The company supports businesses and individuals in achieving their professional goals.

LinkedIn

HarbourVest is an independent investment firm that provides innovative private equity solutions to institutional clients worldwide.  As one of the first private equity fund-of-funds, they have a long and distinguished history of investing in venture, buyout, and mezzanine and distressed markets in the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific, and emerging markets through primary partnerships, secondary purchases, and direct investments.

HarbourVest Partners

Knoll Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in B2B technology enabled companies prior to the Series A round.

Knoll Ventures

Owl Rock aims to meet the distinct and underserved financing needs of middle-market companies through tailored “one-stop” financing solutions across the capital structure. Its seasoned executives’ experience in designing and funding custom solutions positions us as a desirable lending partner to middle-market companies and their sponsors. It deploys capital through Owl Rock Capital Corporation, which has elected to be treated as a business development company under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended. Owl Rock Capital Corporation will originate, underwrite and invest in senior secured or unsecured loans, subordinated loans or mezzanine loans and, to a lesser extent, equity-related securities and warrants. Owl Rock Capital Advisors, a SEC-registered investment adviser, manages Owl Rock Capital Corporation.

Owl Rock Capital

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

Endeavor Catalyst is the rules-based, co-investment fund of Endeavor, set up to invest exclusively in Endeavor Entrepreneur-led companies and to sustain Endeavor’s long-term operations in a mission-aligned way. Launched in 2012, Endeavor Catalyst has ~$500M+ AUM across four funds and has made 260+ investments to date in 35+ different markets. Today The Endeavor Catalyst portfolio has 53 companies valued at $1B+. Investments include Globant (NYSE:GLOB), Rappi, and Creditas in Latin America; Yemeksepeti.com and Careem in MENA; and Bukalapak and Carro in Indonesia.

Endeavor Catalyst

Bossa Invest manages investment portfolios and provides asset management services to clients. It analyzes market trends to inform investment decisions. Bossa Invest serves multiple sectors, including finance, technology, and real estate.

Bossa Invest

Salesloft

About Salesloft: Salesloft powers durable revenue growth for the world’s most demanding companies. Salesloft’s industry-leading Revenue Orchestration Platform uses purpose-built AI to help market-facing teams prioritize and take action on what matters most, from first touch to upsell and renewal. More than 5,000 customers including Google, 3M, IBM, Shopify, Square, and Cisco gain a performance force multiplier with Salesloft by shifting to a durable revenue engagement model, helping them solve the complexities of modern B2B sales and unlock revenue efficiency.

Salesloft is an AI-powered revenue orchestration platform designed to improve sales performance and pipeline management. Its technology focuses on guiding go-to-market teams with data-driven insights to optimize customer interactions and engagement. The company offers a suite of products and capabilities, including Cadence for pipeline building, Conversations for insights and coaching, Deals for pipeline management and forecasting, Forecast for predicting sales outcomes, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12862">Rhythm</a> for task prioritization, and Drift for early engagement with in-market buyers.

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

Sales Engagement Platforms

Salesloft Launches Command Center to Operationalize Revenue Insights

Salesloft is an AI-powered revenue orchestration platform designed to improve sales performance and pipeline management. Its technology focuses on guiding go-to-market teams with data-driven insights to optimize customer interactions and engagement. The company offers a suite of products and capabilities, including Cadence for pipeline building, Conversations for insights and coaching, Deals for pipeline management and forecasting, Forecast for predicting sales outcomes, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12862">Rhythm</a> for task prioritization, and Drift for early engagement with in-market buyers.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.&nbsp;Salesloft claims to help sales teams generate 322% more pipeline, advance and close deals 75% faster, and win 28% more deals using conversation intelligence.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 partnershipsAs of August 2024, the platform served more than 5,000 customers, including Google, 3M, IBM, LinkedIn, Cisco, and Dell.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;

Outreach is a sales execution platform designed to optimize and enhance sales processes across organizations. Its technology leverages AI and data-driven insights to improve sales performance, streamline workflows, and improve productivity. Its suite of solutions includesSales Engagement: Outreach provides tools to structure and automate sales outreach, ensuring that sales reps send timely, relevant messages to the right peopleDeal Management: The platform simplifies deal management by helping sales teams track deal progress, spot potential risks, and identify the best actions to maintain momentum and close dealsPipeline Management: Outreach offers comprehensive pipeline management features, including advanced forecasting and modeling capabilities to predict revenue needs and build more accurate forecastsConversation Intelligence: Powered by Kaia, a voice-based AI sales assistant, this feature analyzes sales conversations to provide actionable insights and coachingRep Coaching: Outreach supports real-time coaching by identifying skill gaps and providing feedback, which helps in enhancing the effectiveness of sales reps and aligning their activities with best practicesDeal Insights: The platform provides detailed insights into deal performance, helping sales teams understand why deals are won or lost and what actions are needed to increase success ratesMutual Action Plans: Outreach facilitates the creation of mutual action plans that align the sales team and the customer on the next steps, ensuring a clear path to closing dealsSales Forecasting: The platform uses AI to generate accurate sales forecasts, helping teams better plan and allocate resources based on predictive data and historical trends.The platform integrates with popular customer relationship management (CRM) platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and LeanData. The company is deeply integrated with third-party apps to attract large enterprise customers and has a network of 1,200+ partners.&nbsp;Outreach's machine learning model claims to predict deal closure with 81% accuracy and recommends actions to keep deals on track by analyzing unique engagement signals from emails, calls, and meetings.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 partnershipsAs of August 2024, the platform served more than 6,000 companies, including Zoom, Databricks, ELSEVIER, Okta, and Siemens.In 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 organizations to connect Outreach's datasets with other enterprise data and improve sales cycle.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Outreach

People.ai is a revenue intelligence platform that uses AI-powered automation to help sales teams optimize their go-to-market (GTM) strategies by capturing and analyzing sales activities such as emails, meetings, and calls. People.ai's suite of solutions includes SalesAI for predictive insights, ClosePlan for deal qualification, and PeopleGlass for real-time visibility into account and opportunity activity, enabling teams to focus on the right accounts and buyers. The platform integrates with tools such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, and Zoom to automate data collection and deliver accurate and enriched insights that improve sales efficiency and effectiveness.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 GenAI 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.People.ai claims to capture 1.8 million sales activities per hour, achieve 92% forecast accuracy, and increase net new customer meetings by 25%.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, its customers include Cisco, Okta, Verizon, Zoom, Five9, and Pluralsight.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 "Oracle Fusion Sales" to support its sales process.

People.ai

Revenue.io (formerly RingDNA) is an AI-powered sales execution platform designed to increase sales team productivity and efficiency. The platform leverages GenAI and integrates <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/2055">Salesforce</a> to centralize and streamline sales workflows, automate key tasks, and deliver real-time guidance and insights. Key products includeRingDNA: An AI-powered dialer that improves sales workflows with features like click-to-call, voicemail drop, and call recording while automating tasks and providing real-time call guidanceConversation AI: This solution provides real-time coaching, transcribes and analyzes calls, automates follow-up emails, and builds libraries of best practices to improve sales performanceGuided Selling: Provides real-time guidance through the sales process, automates cadences, prioritizes leads, and delivers personalized playbooks to ensure best practices are followedCallerDNA: Tracks the source of inbound calls, captures data, and routes calls to the appropriate repsMoments: Delivers real-time agent assistance for sales and customer support, providing on-the-spot guidance, objection handling, and automated follow-up tasks.Revenue.io integrates with a range of popular solutions, including D&amp;B, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, and HubSpot. Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of August 2024, its customers include Hewlett Packard, Amazon Web Services, Autodesk, SAP Concur, Lyft, and Twilio.

Revenue.io

Apollo.io (formerly known as ZenProspect) is a comprehensive sales platform that integrates sales intelligence and sales engagement functionalities. The platform’s products and services include&nbsp;1) Contact &amp; Account Search: Helps users find and qualify leads and companies using Apollo's Living Data Network to provide up-to-date B2B data on 275 million contacts and 73 million companies (as of August 2024)2) Scores &amp; Signals: Provides insights into lead engagement and company signals to prioritize outreach efforts3) Inbound Optimization: Enhances lead capture and qualification by optimizing inbound forms and processes4) Sales Engagement: Automates outbound sales activities, including email and phone outreach, to streamline prospecting and follow-ups5) Meetings: Assists in scheduling, preparing for, and following up on sales meetings6) Deal Management: Offers tools to manage and close deals with actionable insights and recommendations7) Conversation Intelligence: Records, tracks, and analyzes sales conversations to provide feedback and improve sales tactics8) Analytics: Provides detailed performance metrics to identify successful strategies and areas for improvement9) Coaching: Delivers actionable feedback to sales representatives to enhance their performance and effectiveness10) Workflow Engine: Automates repetitive tasks and processes to accelerate lead management and sales operations11) &nbsp;Enrich &amp; Cleanse: Syncs and enriches CRM data to maintain accuracy and completeness in customer information.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. In August 2023, the company was valued at <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21434">USD 1.6 billion.&nbsp;</a>Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, Apollo.io had served more than 1 million users across 500,000 companies, including Stripe, Census, customer.io, DocuSign, and AUTODESK.&nbsp;

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.

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

AI/ML solutions automate and streamline sales processes by providing insights

Sales engagement platforms use personalization to enhance the effectiveness of sales outreach

Uses GenAI for tasks like lead generation, content personalization, sales forecasting, and customer segmentation

Sales workflow automation platforms provide solutions for distributed sales teams

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

<div>
 Drift, a B2B engagement platform for accelerating revenue, has been acquired by Salesloft, a sales platform providing an integrated service. The acquisition amount is undisclosed.
 
 Salesloft plans to merge with Drift following the acquisition. The goal is to create a revenue orchestration platform powered by AI. This new platform will cater to the entire buyer's journey, aiming to achieve revenue goals for their combined companies, as well as simplifying the engagement process between B2B buyers and sellers. 
 
 Salesloft is a comprehensive sales engagement platform catering to sales professionals across the customer lifecycle. They offer CRM integration, sales cadence, sales pipeline management, and analytics reporting. Their platform is designed for large enterprises and boasts significant clients such as Google, LinkedIn, Cisco, and Dell.
</div> Analyst QuickTake : 
 Salesloft's acquisition of Drift is a strategic move to strengthen Salesloft's position in sales engagement and further strengthen its buyer experience and conversational AI capabilities. By joining forces, the two companies aim to bridge the gap between web engagement and revenue teams, offering a comprehensive AI-powered solution. The acquisition builds on Salesloft's <a href="https: 
//www.salesloft.com/company/company-news/salesloft-acquires-instereo/"> acquisition of InStereo, </a> a sales strategy consulting firm, in July 2021. The acquisition of InStereo established Salesloft's focus on buyer engagement in sales and marketing campaigns.

Salesloft

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