HubSpot Ventures

Automation to improve business efficiency

Workflow Automation Platforms

Bardeen.ai offers a workflow automation platform that allows users to automate repetitive tasks and control web applications from any location. The company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18051">launched the platform</a> in April 2023, offering tailored solutions for HR, sales, and operations teams including automations for recruiting, meeting scheduling, lead management, and employee productivity. Users can download the Bardeen browser extension and select the tasks to be automated, such as copy-pasting web data to spreadsheets, web scraping, locating email addresses, and setting meeting reminders. In mid-2024, the company also introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32507">“Bardeen 3.0,”</a> which includes enterprise-grade encryption, compliance, and additional integrations.The platform enables users to build automations from scratch and provides over 200 pre-built templates (as of November 2023) called playbooks. Additionally, Bardeen offers an AI suggestion tool to suggest tasks that could be automated based on the user’s currently opened tabs and connected apps.The platform offers integrations with several tools such as G-Suite, Jira, Slack, Trello, Notion, Airtable, and Coda, in addition to its built-in tools, including website data scrapers, AI modules for optical character recognition (OCR), and text-to-speech.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, the compay had 300,000 users and more than 3,000 paying customers including Deel, Miro, Kearney, WPP, and 10Web.

11x is a UK-based AI and automation company that specializes in building autonomous digital workers designed to automatically perform tasks and functions. The company’s flagship no-code platform, Platform X, enables users to create, collaborate on, and deploy digital workers of their own. 11xAI also offers pre-built AI agents for a range of tasks, including sales development and inbound lead qualification.&nbsp;11x’s AI sales development representative called "Alice" can automate a company's outbound sales process. It leverages a vast amount of ingested data, including more than 500 million leads, to curate lists of the most valuable prospects and craft personalized outbound campaigns, customizing messages to individual leads. Moreover, the company offers an AI phone representative named “Jordan,” which can automate inbound and outbound calls, send emails, and schedule meetings. Users can also provide scripts, recordings, training materials, and access to their knowledge base to train AI agents.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, 11x served a number of enterprise clients such as Otter.ai, Soldom, Kissflow, Gelato, Worksome, and Brex. The platform also integrates with a number of third-party solutions such as Slack, Zoho, LinkedIn, Gmail, and Zoho.&nbsp;

Founded in 2023, Artisan develops autonomous AI agents that enable users to automate sales-related workflows. The company's flagship AI assistant (Ava) can be integrated into existing outbound sales workflows and handle tasks such as finding prospects, researching companies, and creating personalized emails. Users can also launch and manage multiple outbound campaigns and receive detailed insights about their performance. Moreover, Ava can access over 300 million B2B leads across 200 countries, enrich them with demographic, firmographic, intent and technographic data, and verify their email addresses. The solution also supports over 40 languages (as of September 2024).&nbsp;The company claims its platform can automate 80% of tasks handled by outbound sales representatives. In September 2024, the company announced plans to expand beyond sales and launch AI assistants for marketing and customer success operations.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, Artisan has reached USD 1 million in annual recurring revenue within three months of launch, serving over 120 customers, including Treatwell, Fondo, and Rho.The platform also integrates with a number of third-party tools such as Salesforce, Slack, Gmail, and Outlook.&nbsp; &nbsp;

The tools that power remote work are define the next generation of enterprise software.

Remote Work Tools

Descript is a tool that provides audio and video editing as well as transcription and screen-recording software. Descript is a spin-off from Detour ( audio tour guide software), which was sold to Bose in 2018.&nbsp;Descript creates digital voice profiles of users and transcribes (speech to text) audio recordings. Initially, Descript allowed users to delete aspects of the audio via text edits. In September 2019, the company acquired Canadian audio editing tool Lyrebird to create “Overdub.” Using Overdub, Descript provided capabilities to turn new additions back into audio via text.&nbsp; The acquisition was funded by its Series A round worth USD 15 million led by Andreessen Horowitz and Redpoint. Additionally, in August 2023, the company acquired SquadCast, a remote recording studio.&nbsp;In October 2020, the company launched “Descript Video,” providing video editing capabilities similar to audio editing. Using Descript Video, users can collaboratively edit videos using transcribed text.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsMore than 6 million creators &amp; teams use Descript, including Stanford University, Skimms, Vice, and Hubspot.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14675">November 2022</a>, it raised USD 50 million in a Series C funding round led by the OpenAI Startup Fund. The fresh funds were used to amplify the implementation of AI to combine video, images, and text into a new way of content creation.

Switchboard is a cloud-based coworking platform that lets users communicate via video and collaborate in real time using web-based applications within private or shared virtual workspaces (“rooms”). Users can add any URL, image, video, or non-web document to a Switchboard room and all team members can access and interact with them simultaneously. The platform offers video, audio, and chat tools, such as a breakout feature for one-on-one conversations to facilitate real-time communication, as well as meeting memory and interactive shared browsers to reduce preparation time for recurring meetings. Switchboard claims its platform to be secure and SOC 2 compliant, with no need for integration or plug-ins to use it.&nbsp;As of April 2022, Switchboard holds five patents for its technology, while the platform is used by employees with highly-collaborative job roles such as product, project, and design managers.Key customers and partnershipsThe platform allows users to collaborate on web-based applications such as Microsoft, Giphy, Amplitude, Figma, Asana, YouTube, Miro, Clickup, Notion, Canva, Linear, Trello, Coda, Monday.com, Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets. The company is backed by collaborative investors Icon Ventures, Sequoia, XYZ Venture Capital, Spark Capital, The General Partnership.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18297">May 2023</a>, Switchboard received an undisclosed investment from HubSpot Ventures, which was allocated to developing Switchboard's digital collaboration workspace. This was followed by its USD 25 million Series A round in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11922">July 2022</a>.&nbsp;

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

Sales Engagement Platforms

Avoma is an all-in-one AI-powered sales automation platform designed to streamline meeting processes and increase productivity for customer-facing teams. The platform automates various tasks such as note-taking, lead routing, CRM entry, call coaching, and forecasting. Avoma supports the entire meeting lifecycle with features such as scheduling, agenda templates, automated recording, transcription, live bookmarking, AI-generated notes, and conversational intelligence. It also provides tools for collaboration, coaching, and revenue intelligence, enabling organizations to gain actionable insights, improve performance, and accelerate learning. Avoma integrates with popular tools such as calendars, CRMs (Salesforce, Pipedrive, and HubSpot), and conferencing systems (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Bluejeans).Avoma claims its tools improve the productivity of sales teams by 30%. In December 2021, the company also reported a 400% YoY revenue growth over the last three years.&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of August 2024, the platform served more than 900 companies, including Athelas, Orum, BOOMCLOUD, moengage, onfleet, LeanData, and esper.&nbsp;

Clari is an AI-powered platform designed to optimize revenue operations (RevOps) and sales processes. The company's technology leverages advanced AI to provide detailed, actionable insights that streamline sales operations and increase productivity. Clari's product suite includes features such as Forecast, which provides revenue forecasts; Capture, which automatically captures deal activity; Inspect, an AI-driven deal inspection tool; Align, which supports buyer collaboration; and Groove, an automated sales engagement strategy optimizer. Emphasizing its sales intelligence solutions, Clari provides tools such as Revenue Database (RevDB), RevAI, and comprehensive analytics that improve data quality and forecasting. In addition, its conversation intelligence solutions, branded as Copilot, focus on revenue conversation intelligence and coaching, enabling sales teams to learn from client interactions. Clari supports 40+ integrations, including customer relationship management (CRMs) like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive.In January 2022, Clari reported a 10x growth in revenue data under management over the previous two years.&nbsp;Clari entered the M&amp;A space by acquiring DealPoint, a deal management and collaboration software, for an undisclosed sum in September 2021. The acquisition bolstered Clari’s product capabilities, with the addition of new features such as deal rooms and mutual action plans. In June 2022, the company acquired Wingman, a conversation intelligence platform, to enhance communication across various departments. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21434">August 2023, </a>the company acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/234681">Groove,</a> a sales workforce automation platform, to offer an end-to-end revenue platform that manages internal and external revenue workflows, from prospecting to closing to renewing.&nbsp;Clari claims a 10% reduction in lost deals, a 90% increase in productivity, and a 30% increase in pipeline creation.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of August 2024, the platform has served 1,100 companies globally, including Okta, Adobe, Workday, Zoom, and Finastra.In April 2024, the company partnered with consulting firm Deloitte Digital to improve revenue accuracy and operational efficiency for B2B companies.

New data privacy regulations have opened up space for a new wave of compliance-focused startups.

Digital Privacy Tools

Vanta graduated from Y Combinator in 2018 and was largely bootstrapped since its founding in 2016. Vanta provides compliance tools that help companies to automatically comply with cybersecurity and privacy standards to protect data. The company currently supports six compliance standards including the GDPR and CCPA. Vanta helps enterprises and SMBs earn security certifications and continuously monitors their systems to ensure compliance. Vanta Trust Reports demonstrates an organization’s security posture by displaying the real-time status about tests and controls and helps them share their real-time security status with prospects and customers. The platform integrates with automated security tools including cloud services, cybersecurity software, and other applications to automatically evaluate and determine whether each application is configured in accordance with security requirements.Vanta automates the collection of evidence to document the actions taken to prove compliance. Vanta’s set of controls for GDPR and CCPA are always updated to reflect new regulations and requirements. Vanta provides continuous security monitoring to alert and address failing tests, non-compliant employees, and other risks in real time. Vanta’s policy builder tool creates and implements controls tailored to the organization while complying with privacy regulations. The company also provides ongoing access to a network of in-house experts.As of March 2024, Vanta reported more than USD 100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, Vanta served more than 8,000 organizations, including Quora, Omni Hotels, and IcelandAir.

DataGrail provides a platform for privacy management, specifically designed to comply with regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, etc. The company’s Live Data Map feature integrates with existing applications and automatically carries out data discovery and mapping, enabling organizations to automate data subject rights requests, data protection impact assessments, among other data-related requirements. The platform provides organizations the ability to monitor their privacy program and the ability to deploy a user-facing portal that can be used to manage their consent and email preferences, which are then enforced organization-wide. In March 2024, the company reported it had more than tripled revenue since late 2022.DataGrail’s Risk Monitor leverages intelligent workflows and pre-populated documentation to build risk assessments such as automated Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs), or third-party assessments.The company supported integrations with over 2,000 enterprise apps, data platforms, and internal systems with pre-built connectors as of September 2024.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, DataGrail’s customer base included notable companies such as Bed Bath &amp; Beyond, Fanduel, Okta, and Salesforce.DataGrail partnered with the cloud-based CRM platform HubSpot in July 2021 to offer unified preference management, maintain continuous data discovery, and automate data subject requests (DSRs and DSARs) in compliance with CCPA, CPRA, and GDPR.

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

Canada-based Jasper is an AI-powered platform for marketing teams that can generate text and image content for blog posts, articles, social media, emails, and marketing copy, so content output can be scaled. Jasper can be operated via a conversational interface called “Jasper Chat,” simplifying interactions with the AI. As of May 2024, Jasper could generate content in over 30 languages. As of October 2022, the company was valued at USD 1.5 billion and reported over 100% YoY ARR growth in 2022.Jasper produces content using natural language and follow-up prompts to modify content, including expanding specific sections, rewriting in different styles, summarizing, and generating counterarguments. Jasper’s AI can be trained on a specific writing style, tone, and content to generate content fitting within a brand’s themes. Common use cases for Jasper include:1) Social media: Generating captions for social media posts, scripts for videos, and articles for blogs. Content can be generated directly on social media using Jasper’s Google Chrome browser extension.2) Advertising: Providing advertising ideas, insights into consumer wants, and common pain points3) Articles: Long-form text content on any topic. It also offers built-in plagiarism detection and search engine optimization with Jasper’s SEO partner, “Surfer.”4) Emails: Generating email subject lines and personalized messages, including images5) Websites: Creating headlines, product descriptions, FAQs, and optimization for search engines. The Chrome extension allows content creation directly within website platforms.6) Art: Generating high-quality images for advertising, blog posts, or websites from simple language descriptions.The platform can also draw on recent Google data for up-to-date content and news. Grammar, spell checking, and plagiarism detection, combined with SEO optimization and ranking tools, are integrated to enhance outputs and reduce effort and time spent.Jasper introduced a marketing campaign creation platform in June 2023, which can transform a brief campaign description into a comprehensive compilation of content and assets that align with the specified campaign concept. In November 2023, the company launched the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24518">Solutions Partner Program</a> designed to incorporate AI functionalities into marketing agency approaches.The company claims to achieve an 80% time reduction on first drafts, a 10x increase in output, and 400% ROI.Jasper acquired AI grammar and style checker Outwrite in December 2022. It also acquired AI image creation and editing platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26898">Clipdrop</a> from Stability AI in February 2024 to expand marketing capabilities.Key customers and partnershipsJasper reported over 100,000 paying customers in August 2023, including enterprise clients Zoom, HelloFresh, Docusign, WalkMe, Zendesk, Intel, SentinelOne, Outdoorsy, Sports Illustrated, Canva, Strata, Robin Hood, and IBM.

<div>
 
 Goldcast develops marketing intelligence and management solutions specialized for B2B and event marketers. The firm provides an end-to-end event management platform to build, organize, and manage both online and hybrid events ranging from webinars to full-scale conferences. Features of the platform include 1) event page design, 2) automated email reminders and followups, 3) check-in and badging solutions, and 4) custom reporting. The firm also provides an Audience Intent Metrics and Signals (AIMS) solution that can integrate with marketing automation and CRMs including Slack, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Marketo, which can track event attendee activity for lead scoring, pipeline attribution, and identify potential leads to execute custom marketing campaign. As of August 2022, the firm's platform caters to 100+ marketing teams from 20+ firms including 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/523166">
 Drift
 </a>
 , 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/68161">
 Salesloft
 </a>
 , 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/597690">
 Attentive
 </a>
 , 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/179467">
 Weave
 </a>
 , and Microsoft GitHub. 
 
 
 The firm claims that its users have experienced an increase in attendance rates and time spent at events, higher sales conversions, an increase in demo requests, and accelerated marketing pipeline goals.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Goldcast raised USD 28 million in Series A funding in August 2022 led by WestBridge Capital. The funds are earmarked for product development and to expand the company's leadership team and marketing initiatives. It also raised USD 10 million in seed funding in February 2022 led by Unusual Ventures. The firm claimed that in 2021, it experienced a 10x growth.
 
</div>

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

Descript is an AI-powered media editing platform that allows creators to edit audio and video recordings by manipulating text transcriptions. Users upload or record a piece of content in the platform, from which a speech transcript is automatically generated; this transcript can then be edited by the user in an interface similar to a text document, with each change being reflected in the content. Descript is aimed at podcast creators and videographers who may not have the access or expertise to utilize professional editing applications. It offers the following features:1) Transcription: Transcribes recordings in 22 languages (May 2024), automatically adding speaker labels, and offers human written transcription services2) Podcasting: Simplifies editing, collaboration, and publishing podcasts3) Screen recording: Tools for scripting, storyboarding, recording voiceovers, screen capturing, and editing4) Social clips and templates: Extracts sections from recordings via its transcript, integrates editing tools to add animations, visuals, or adjusting layouts and formats for social media5) Overdub: Allows users to add or replace sections of voiceover using a cloned voice model, offers pre-recorded voices to generate full voiceovers directly from text6) Studio sound: Removes background noise from recordings7) Filler word removal: Automatically deletes filler words from a voice recording8) Subtitles and captions: Allows automatic generation and editing of subtitles or captions9) Publishing: Generates shareable web pages of content created using the platformThe platform also incorporates a full, featured video editor and various other tools to present a unified platform for creator workflows.Descript acquired AI research company Lyrebird in 2019 to integrate its voice modeling technology. Lyrebird continued to operate as Descript’s research arm as of June 2023. In August 2023, the company acquired SquadCast, a provider of remote recording solutions, to integrate a remote recording solution into Descript's video and audio editing platform, providing a comprehensive tool for podcasters and video creators. In November 2022, the company was valued at USD 550 million.Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2024, its customers included Shopify, The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, UiPath, ESPN, and Audible.In August 2022, the company partnered with Blubrry, a full-service podcast hosting company, to allow customers to publish edited podcasts directly to Blubrry’s publishing platform. In October 2022, Descript partnered with the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program to help creators increase their audiences and learn to monetize their content.

Captions is a developer of an AI-enabled platform for video content creation. It offers a suite of tools allowing users to produce studio-grade videos including digital avatars, intelligent video editing capabilities, instant dubbing, audio correction, and automated captioning. A standout feature of Captions' platform is AI Creator, a proprietary tool that generates engaging "talking videos" entirely through AI. This solution has found widespread application among small businesses, enabling them to create organic social media posts and advertisements. It also offers AI Edit, a one-tap video editing solution, and Lipdub, a model that generates natural lip movements and body language.Key customers and partnershipsThe company had over 10 million downloads for its mobile app alone as of July 2024.

The innovative cost dynamics of serverless computing allow more customers onto the cloud without breaking the bank.

Serverless Computing

Creators of “Jamstack,” a web development architecture based on JavaScript, APIs, and Markup (JAM), Netlify offers a platform for developers to build applications, websites, and ecommerce stores. The platform unites a number of modern web frameworks, serverless functions and edge computing into one platform. The company entered the serverless market in 2018 with the launch of serverless functions to enable developers to deploy front-end code and backend functions using a single repo and workflow.The company provides “Netlify Edge Functions,” a tool that enables developers to build apps and create content on the edge of networks to public beta on its Netlify platform. The new tool offers a full-fledged runtime that can be used for edge rendering and a full runtime environment that enables developers to run serverless JavaScript/TypeScript functions and manage applications.In January 2022, Netlify acquired Quirrel, an open source platform for managing and scheduling serverless functions for an undisclosed amount, to utilize Quirrel’s technology to add a “Scheduled Functions” feature to its platform’s serverless capabilities.In February 2023, the company went on to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16304?industryIds=25">acquire its competitor Gatsby</a>, the creator of the “GatsbyJS” open-source framework for creating websites, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition enabled Netlify to integrate Gatsby’s “Valhalla Content Hub”, a centralized data layer, into its own platform so users can access various data sources via a unified GraphQL application programming interface (API). Additionally, the company planned to invest in the Gatsby framework, and integrate many of the Gatsby Cloud features into the Netlify platform.In June 2023, Netlify acquired Stackbit, a no-code platform to build and manage websites, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition served to expand Netlify’s product portfolio and enable the company to offer Stackbit’s range of no-code tools and features for web development.Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2021, the company served over 2 million developers and its customer base included large corporations such as Adyen, Affirm, AutoDesk, Box, H&amp;R Block, Klépierre, Okta, ServiceNow, Twilio, Unilever, and VMware.

Giving creators the power of content monetization and audience engagement.

Creator Economy

Circle offers a community platform for creators to publish content and engage with paying customers. Community members can discuss various topics with creators and each other via Circle’s “Space.” Moreover, white-label custom domains are offered to communities. The company planned to eventually provide all the tools that a creator would require holistically (from publishing newsletters, videos, and audio podcasts to setting up streaming, engaging with customers, selling tickets and merchandise, and providing event calendars).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It also reported that it had surpassed USD 4 million ARR in December 2021 (up from USD 1 million in December 2020 when it brought its iOS app out of beta mode).In February 2021, the company stated that 60% of its communities were “personality-led” by creators such as YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and Patreon creators. Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of October 2023, the company served 8,500+ communities.

Modern tools to train and motivate staff, and bridge emerging skill gaps.

EdTech: Corporate Learning

<div>
 
 Founded in 2019 by Paul Fifield and Alexandra Damgaard, UK firm Sales Impact Academy is a go-to-market learning platform providing live courses delivered by high-profile coaches in management and leadership, marketing, sales, prospecting customer success, and revenue operations for technology companies. The lessons are available on an annual subscription basis and, as of March 2022, the platform was being used by more than 260 customers.
 
 
 In May 2022, the company launched its SIA Foundation, which focuses on providing free education in the form of scholarships to support underprivileged communities. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2022, the company raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9520">
 USD 22 million in a funding round 
 </a>
 co-led by new investors HubSpot Ventures and MIT Investment Management Company, and will use the funds for platform development. It reported a revenue growth of 500% YoY, while its learning community had grown to 14,560 from 3,330 professionals over the past year, and claimed to be the largest go-to-market learning community in the world. The round follows its 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4462">
 USD 4 million seed and debt funding round 
 </a>
 in July 2021. 
 
 
 
</div>

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

Balance, formed by former PayPal executives Bar Geron and Yoni Shuster, offers payment infrastructure to build digital checkout experiences as well as vendor payment automation and reconciliation, for business-to-business (B2B) organizations. The platform enables merchants to offer business customers an array of payment options such as real-time payments, paying with net terms, recurring payments, and payments after delivery.Balance is built on top of Stripe’s infrastructure, and accepts a range of payment methods, including card, wire, check, and automated clearing house (ACH) payments. However, Balance’s infrastructure goes beyond payments, and evaluates the risk of customers, merchants, and payment terms selected.The company also offers buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) solutions to its users, for which it charges a factoring fee. Balance operates through its offices in Tel Aviv (Israel) and New York.Key customers and partnerships Balance’s customers range from startups to large listed enterprises, across a range of industries such as steel, freight, construction, medical supply, etc. and even included ecommerce businesses such as BigCommerce (B2B edition) and Magento. As of July 2022, the company had over 300 enterprise and marketplace users.In November 2022, Balance noted that its customer base had grown by 10x since its launch (February 2021). Funding and financialsBalance received <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14885?industryIds=53">a USD 350 million credit facility </a>in November 2022, from Viola Credit, shortly after raising <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11872?industryIds=53">USD 56 million in Series B funding </a>in July. The funds raised during the year were earmarked for increasing the company’s financing capabilities, scaling its net terms product, customer acquisitions, and recruitment.

Platforms, apps, and cards to keep the corporate wallet in check

Business Expense Management

Based in Bulgaria, Payhawk offers a business expense card and payout management platform. Payhawk users get a dedicated International Bank Account Number (IBAN) for enterprise customers to move money into from their existing bank accounts to fund cards and transactions. The platform lets enterprise users issue physical and virtual business expense cards (credit and debit cards) for individuals and teams and set custom limits and approval flows for the cards. The card users can then leverage Payhawk’s OCR and machine learning technology (that supports more than 60 languages) to automatically upload receipts for expense recording and management purposes. Payhawk also reportedly offers a 3% cashback for its European customers on card payments, which helps to partially or fully negate the platform subscription costs. Payhawk enables businesses to make payments to vendors directly from the platform (through the dedicated IBAN), through Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Instant and Faster Payments transfers. It also provides a subscription optimization solution that helps businesses uncover hidden costs and identify duplicate subscriptions, in addition to making payments for them.The platform can be integrated with several ERP and accounting softwares, including NetSuite, QuickBooks, TravelPerk, Xero, and Microsoft Dynamics. The company charges users a monthly subscription of EUR 149 per month (for just the cards) or EUR 299 per month (inclusive of payout solutions, OCR, and out-of-pocket expense management), with custom plans available for larger players. In addition to the subscription, Payhawk charges EUR 9 per month per card issued.In November 2023, Payhawk i <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24259">ntroduced a Purchase Orders system </a>to automate and enhance the procure-to-pay process for businesses.The company has a global presence with offices in the UK, Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13439">the US </a>, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20206">Lithuania </a>. In January 2024, Payhawk obtained an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25634">Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license from UK, </a>enabling the company to directly issue electronic money, process digital payments and provide card issuance and payment solutions to customers in the UK. Due to the acquisition of the new license and its performance in 2023, the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27116">company also aimed to increase the headcount by 44% </a>in the UK in 2024. Key customers and partnershipsPayhawk targets medium-sized and large enterprises, primarily those with multinational operations. As of July 2023, the company had customers based across 32 countries, with LuxAir, Lotto24, Viking Life, and Flink featuring among them.In August 2023, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20756">the company partnered </a>with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/628166">Yapily </a>to offer instant payment top-ups to Payhawk debit and credit accounts, by linking bank accounts from over 2,000 banks and financial institutions.In September 2023, Payhawk <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21865">launched “Payhawk Green” in partnership with Lune </a>, to help companies make sustainable spending decisions. This allows customers to automatically quantify the CO2 associated with purchases made on Payhawk cards, and to also collect and manage ESG data for suppliers to improve supply chain transparency.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32537">August 2024,</a> payhawk partnered with Marqeta, to enable fraud prevention and prevent misuse of company funds by utilizing advanced&nbsp; card control.Previously in&nbsp; August 2023,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20756"> the company partnered</a> with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/628166">Yapily</a> to offer instant payment top-ups to Payhawk debit and credit accounts, by linking bank accounts from over 2,000 banks and financial institutions.

Creating affordable content for the digital age

Content Creation Tools

Jasper AI is an artificial intelligence software company that provides an AI content platform to help businesses and professional creators brainstorm and create content more quickly and efficiently. Founded in 2021 by Dave Rogenmoser, Chris Hull, and John Philip Morgan, Jasper leverages AI technology to generate blog articles, social media posts, website copy, marketing materials, and more.
Jasper's core product is an AI writing assistant that uses advanced language models like GPT-4 to produce high-quality, original content based on the user's inputs and prompts. The platform combines state-of-the-art AI models, the user's brand information, recent search data, and optimization tools to generate tailored content. With a focus on speed, versatility, and customization, Jasper aims to streamline the content creation process across various industries and use cases.
In addition to its core AI writing capabilities, Jasper offers features like plagiarism checking, grammar correction, and SEO optimization to ensure high-quality, original, and search-engine-friendly content.
Key customers and partnerships
According to the sources, Jasper has gained over 70,000 customers since its launch, including well-known companies like Google, Airbnb, IBM, Keller Williams, and Promo. The company has also partnered with popular tools and platforms like Surfer SEO, Grammarly, and Copyscape to enhance its offerings.
Jasper has raised USD 125 million in funding at a USD 1.5 billion valuation, led by investors such as Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, IVP, Foundation Capital, Founders Circle Capital, Coatue, and HubSpot Ventures. The company plans to use these funds to expand its core products, improve customer experience, and bring its technology to more applications and integrations.
With a strong focus on responsible AI use, Jasper emphasizes data security, privacy, and ethical practices. The company's data centers are based in the US, and it follows industry standards like GDPR, SOC2, and PCI compliance.

Giving firms greater control over their SaaS stack

B2B SaaS Management Platforms

G2 is a leading software review platform that leverages artificial intelligence to transform revenue and customer-facing teams. The company's Reality Platform automatically captures customer interactions and utilizes that data to help teams improve business performance. G2's platform provides insights at scale, empowering companies to determine the best actions for achieving successful outcomes. As of February 2022, G2 earned the #1 spot on both the Best Software Products and Highest Satisfaction Products lists. The platform distinguishes itself through its ability to automatically capture customer interactions, derive valuable data-driven insights, and deliver optimal results for sales, customer service, marketing, and other customer-facing roles across diverse industries.
In March 2024, G2 announced surpassing 2 million authentic user reviews on its platform. This milestone underscores the company's rapid growth and success in establishing itself as the world's largest software marketplace, consistently attracting over 60 million visitors annually. Over the years, G2 has witnessed substantial expansion across various regions, with North America remaining its core market while witnessing explosive review growth in the Asia-Pacific region as well.

Tools that streamline software development

DevOps Toolchain

Netlify is a cloud computing and web hosting platform that specializes in deploying and managing Jamstack websites and applications. Founded in 2014, Netlify pioneered the Jamstack architecture, which decouples the frontend web experience from backend business logic and databases. The platform provides developers with tools to build, deploy, and scale modern web projects using Git workflows and serverless functions. Netlify automates the process of building, deploying, and managing websites, handling tasks like continuous integration, continuous deployment, and content delivery network (CDN) distribution.
Netlify's core offering includes Netlify Core for managing workflows, Netlify Connect for accessing content and data sources, and Netlify Create for building applications using JavaScript, APIs, and markup languages. The platform supports a wide range of static site generators and frontend frameworks, including Next.js, Gatsby, and Eleventy. Netlify provides features such as instant rollbacks, split testing, form handling, user authentication, and serverless functions. In October 2023, Netlify launched its Composable Web Platform, aimed at unifying content, data sources, code, and infrastructure for enterprise-scale web development.
Key customers and partnerships
Netlify serves millions of developers and businesses, including Fortune 500 companies like Unilever and Verizon, as well as digital experience companies such as Peloton and Twilio. In February 2023, Netlify acquired Gatsby, one of its former competitors in the Jamstack ecosystem. The company has also invested in several startups through its Jamstack Innovation Fund, including ChiselStrike, Clerk, Clutch, Convex, Deno, Everfund, NuxtLabs, Snaplet, TakeShape, and Tigris Data. Netlify has partnerships with various headless CMS providers and collaborates with framework communities to advance the Jamstack ecosystem.

Harnessing tech to provide exceptional customer experiences

Customer Service Platforms

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.

Threat Prevention Toolchain

Vanta is a leading trust management platform that helps organizations automate and simplify their security compliance processes. Founded in 2018, Vanta pioneered the automated compliance category and has since evolved into an end-to-end trust management solution. The platform enables businesses to monitor, improve, and demonstrate their security posture to customers and partners.
Vanta's core offering automates up to 90% of the evidence collection needed for compliance with frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR. The platform integrates with over 300 tools and services to provide continuous, real-time monitoring of an organization's security controls. This automated approach can reduce the time to achieve compliance by up to 50% compared to traditional manual audits.
In 2023, Vanta expanded its capabilities by launching Vanta AI, which leverages artificial intelligence to further streamline compliance processes. Key features of Vanta AI include automated vendor security reviews, AI-powered questionnaire responses, and intelligent control mapping. The company also introduced the Vanta Trust Center, allowing businesses to showcase their real-time security and compliance status to potential customers.
As of 2024, Vanta serves over 7,000 customers across 58 countries, including notable companies like Quora, Autodesk, and Modern Treasury. The platform has helped Vanta achieve significant growth, surpassing USD 100 million in annual recurring revenue in its 2024 fiscal year. Vanta's success has been recognized in various industry rankings, including being named the #1 leader in G2's Winter 2023 Grid Reports for Security Compliance.
Key customers and partnerships
Vanta's customer base spans various industries and includes both startups and established enterprises. Some of its notable clients are Autodesk, Quora, Modern Treasury, Pendo, Sift, and ZoomInfo. The company has also formed partnerships with leading auditors and service providers to offer a comprehensive compliance solution for businesses of all sizes.
In January 2023, Vanta acquired Trustpage, a startup specializing in security posture communication. This acquisition enhanced Vanta's ability to help customers showcase their security measures and streamline the security review process with potential clients. The integration of Trustpage's features into Vanta's platform has reportedly helped reduce deal cycles by 30% for some customers.
Vanta's global reach is evidenced by its expanding international presence, with offices in Australia, Ireland, and the US. Nearly a quarter of Vanta's customers are located outside the US, reflecting the growing global demand for automated compliance and trust management solutions.

Artisan AI creates digital workers, called Artisans. The company's first Artisan, Ava, automates the entire outbound sales process and can be set up with a 10-minute conversation. Ava creates TCPs, and prospects with her database of over 270,000,000 contacts, crafts and sends highly bespoke email sequences, and books meetings into the user's calendar. The user can manage all features and settings by talking to Ava via Slack.

11x develops autonomous digital workers to help organizations optimize their processes. The company focuses on simplifying go-to-market (GTM) operations by automating specific roles, allowing businesses to save on hiring budgets. Its primary products include Alice, an AI-powered sales development representative, and Jordan.

Bardeen is a no-code workflow automation tool that helps users to do productive businesses using technology for automating their workflow. It develops an application software to replace repetitive tasks with a single shortcut and control web applications and also assists in connecting diverse services. Users download its browser extension and select from a range of pre-built automation tasks they want to automate including copying information from apps into a spreadsheet, scraping data from the web, and reminding participants about an upcoming meeting. Additionally, users can create their own custom automation workflows or modify pre-built ones to fit their exact needs.

Vanta is a trust management platform that simplifies security and compliance processes for organizations. It automates evidence collection for various compliance frameworks and offers continuous control monitoring to manage risk effectively. The platform supports sales teams by providing real-time insights that enhance trust and streamline security reviews.

Captions is an AI-powered creative studio developing a video creation and editing platform for content creation. It offers software solutions to enhance video production, including automatic subtitle generation, eye contact correction, language dubbing, and video clip extraction to simplify the creative process.

doola helps US and Non-US founders turn their dream idea into their dream business. We're a “Business-in-a-Box” for online SMBs. We take care of everything online SMBs need to form an LLC, set up their bank account, accept payments, and manage ongoing compliance and tax filings.

Switchboard allows users to browse the web and apps together at the same time instead of screen-sharing your personal desktop. The company's platform uses modern, secure, hosted, cloud infrastructure for all its services and storage and stores minimal data.  Switchboard was established in 2020 by Amir Ashkenazi in San Jose, California.

Arrows is a customer onboarding checklist. Send every customer a personalized onboarding plan, with automated email reminders, due dates, assigned tasks, and a lot more. One of the hardest things about onboarding is getting everybody on the same page. Using Arrows, you can get ''mutual buy-in'' from your customers to build trust throughout the onboarding process. Plus, with due dates and automated email reminders, they'll always know what should be done next. Arrows is the place for you to collaborate, strategize, and coordinate together. Every customer is different... so why are you giving them the same onboarding plan? With Arrows, personalizing onboarding for your customers is a cinch. Start with a template, so your team never misses important steps. Then customize your plan for each customer, so you can get mutual buy-in on a plan perfectly structured for their goals and timeline.

Vitally is a customer engagement platform for B2B SaaS companies to drive a world-class customer experience and eliminate churn. Vitally's easy-to-use platform integrates all customer data and provides a 360-degree view into the metrics that matter most to you, allowing clients to set up health scores and notifications, and create automation playbooks. Vitally.io is a modern customer success platform that teams actually use.

Jasper is a global Enterprise AI marketing company with offices in the US, Australia and France. Jasper’s platform enables the world's most innovative companies to reimagine their end-to-end marketing workflows, driving increased brand consistency, efficiency and personalization at scale. Jasper has been recognized as ''one of America's fastest-growing private companies'' by Inc. 5000. Learn more at jasper.ai.

Balance is a digital payments platform designed to make the B2B online purchasing experience delightful for buyers and vendors alike. The company was founded in 2019 by Bar Geron and Yoni Shuster and is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Maze empowers product teams to continuously collect and consume user insights across the entire product development cycle. With solutions for participant recruitment, product research, and reporting, Maze helps teams build the habit of continuous product discovery in a platform that enables everyone to run great research.

Sales Impact Academy is the world's leading go-to-market learning platform providing a continuous live learning solution for high-growth technology companies - a kind of 'Peloton for sales'. The traditional education system has let B2B companies down, with a complete lack of formal, structured education in sales and go-to-market. It means 100 million + people across the world are learning on the job, and every commercial individual contributor and leader is at constant risk of missing their targets and often do. Sales Impact Academy is solving this skills crisis by bringing together the world’s best talent to teach structured, live online courses with high learning design principles, and now supports the skills development of over 12,000 learners across 280 customers including Paypal, HubSpot, Github, Gong, Klaviyo, Rubrik & Thoughtspot. Over 70 instructors on the platform include people like Mark Roberge who was CRO at Hubspot, Sarah Brazier from Gong, Chris Voss (FBI's lead international hostage negotiator), Sam Nelson from Outreach, Dan Steinman from Gainsight, Elissa Fink former CMO of Tableau, and many others.   Sales Impact Academy is backed by VCs Stage 2 Capital, MIT, Hubspot Ventures, and Emerge Education.

Payhawk is a leading spend management solution for domestic and international businesses throughout Europe, the US, and the UK. Combining company cards, reimbursable expenses, accounts payable, and seamless accounting software integrations into a single product, Payhawk makes business payments easy — for everyone. Payhawk helps customers in over 32 countries to maximise efficiency, control spending at scale, and stay agile. With offices in London, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Vilnius, Sofia, and New York, Payhawk’s diverse customer base includes top names like LuxAir, Babbel, Vinted, Wallbox and Wagestream.

Aircall provides a cloud-based voice platform that integrates with productivity and helpdesk tools that workplaces are already using to make phone support easy to manage.

Goldcast is a purpose-built platform for enterprises to conduct modern, meaningful, and measurable online events including client summits, workshops, product launches, thought leadership summits, regional conferences. The company provides tools/dashboards for marketers to measure the ROI of their events and get strong lead qualification insights. Goldcast's mission is to create amazing event experiences for enterprises.

Zuper is an information technology company that specializes in the fields of software, SaaS, field service, and HVAC. Zuper enables rapid expansion of service businesses by enhancing and modernizing field operations through a highly adaptable management solution. Seamlessly integrating with top apps and CRMs, Zuper provides personalized support, robust reporting, and analytics.

Crossbeam is the first and largest Ecosystem-Led Growth platform, used by over 19,000 companies to attract, convert, and grow customer relationships using their partner ecosystems.

Clari is a connected revenue operations platform that uses automation and AI to unlock all the activity data captured in key business systems such as marketing automation, CRM, email, calendar, phone, content management, conversations, and more. Clari automatically aligns that data to accounts and opportunities, to deliver visibility, forecasting, and apply predictive insights, which results in more insight, less guesswork, and more predictable revenue. Clari helps companies by changing their revenue operations to be more connected, efficient, and predictable. Clari's platform is used by hundreds of sales, marketing, and customer success teams at B2B companies such as Qualtrics, Lenovo, Adobe, Dropbox, and Okta to control pipelines, audit deals and accounts, forecast the business, and reduce churn.

Reachdesk enables B2B companies to deliver the moments that matter at scale through data-driven direct mail and gifting.  Through Reachdesk companies can deliver gifts and direct mail that build deeper connections with customers, prospects and employees at the click of a button. Our integrations to your tech stack power a clear and quantifiable ROI; the direct channel is no longer a guessing game.

QuotaPath develops a sales commission tracking platform to simplify the process of maximizing quota attainment. Additionally, its platform provides compensation calculation and tracking, forecasting of attainments and earnings, offers a digital quota board to align quotas, and facilitates a digital organizational chart to track role and team changes over time, measure KPIs, and benchmark oneself against teammates. Founded in 2018, the company is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

G2 is a platform to share business software reviews in real-time. It leverages more than 1.3 million user reviews to drive better purchasing decisions. G2 is used by business professionals, buyers, investors, and analysts to select the best software and services based on peer reviews and synthesized social data. The company was founded in 2012 and is based out of Chicago, Illinois.

Circle is a community platform that brings together the creators' discussions, memberships, and content. The company was founded by Sid Yadav, Rudy Santino, and Andrew Guttormsen.

Mux is building the future of online video infrastructure. They started off by building Mux Data, a best-in-class performance analytics tool that’s trusted by developers at companies like Vimeo, Robinhood, CBS Interactive, Discovery, PBS, and TED. Billions of monitored streams later, they launched Mux Video, a simple API for video hosting, encoding, and streaming. Take any video file or live stream and make it play beautifully at scale on any device, powered by magical-feeling features like automatic thumbnails, animated GIFs, and data-driven encoding decisions. Mux measures the performance metrics that actually matter to viewers: rebuffering, startup time, video quality, and errors. Its intuitive dashboard quickly gives users the insight to find issues and make improvements through features like A/B testing, industry-wide scores, alerts, and detailed information about every single video view.

At DataGrail, we believe in a world where people are in control of their privacy and identity. The world's most trusted brands like Salesforce, Overstock.com, Restoration Hardware, NETGEAR, and MyFitnessPal use DataGrail.  DataGrail is a Gartner Cool Vendor and has 4.8/5 stars on G2.

Descript is a collaborative audio and video editor that transcribes audio to a text document for editing. It also provides automated and manual transcribing solutions for voice audio files. In addition, the platform utilizes speech recognition technology to transcribe audio and video files in a short duration of time.

Xentral is a comprehensive business software that enables modern teams to map and manage their products and services centrally and thus share them with the world even more successfully. Startups and established companies from all industries use Xentral to access more than 1,000 functions in the areas of sales, product, logistics, finance, team, and project management. From order processing to delivery, Xentral takes over the most important processes and offers its users an intelligent platform for organizing the business areas. For example, Xentral simplifies customer communication, automates the pick-pack-ship process, controls production, avoids errors in accounting, and offers interfaces with almost all shops, marketplaces, fulfillers, and suppliers worldwide. Xentral offers its business platform as a commercial version Xentral Home in three different packages from 65 euros per month.

Blissfully helps companies discover, integrate, and manage the right technologies by providing hands-on IT as a Service and complementary software. Blissfully was proudly founded in 2016 by serial technology entrepreneurs. Previously, they founded Boundless, an education company that creates online textbooks and learning tools. Boundless raised over $10M in venture capital, reaches millions of students and teachers every month, and was acquired in 2015.

Netlify is the platform your developers love for building fast and dynamic websites, e-commerce stores and web applications. By uniting an extensive ecosystem of technologies, services and APIs into one workflow, Netlify unlocks new levels of team productivity, while saving time and money. As pioneers of the Jamstack movement, Netlify brings together all modern web frameworks, serverless functions and edge computing into one platform to deliver unmatched user experiences. Millions of developers and businesses build with Netlify, from Fortune 500 companies like Unilever and Verizon to companies changing our digital experiences like Peloton and Twilio. Get started for free at netlify.com.

Avoma AI makes remote meetings more actionable and collaborative. The all-in-one AI Meeting Assistant captures transcribes, summarizes, analyzes, and collaborates across every remote meeting  — at scale. Founded in 2017 by Aditya Kothadiya, Devendra Laulkar and Albert Lai, the company was founded in Palo Alto, California, United States.

With the largest public personality platform in the world, Crystal helps you communicate with anyone based on their unique personality.

Grow is a business intelligence dashboard software for small and medium businesses that makes it easy to track the right metrics, make good decisions, and lead with confidence. Quickly set up dashboards in minutes, not months; connect data sources like QuickBooks, Salesforce and Zendesk—along with your own databases and spreadsheets—without waiting for IT. Grow helps you grow your business faster by allowing everyone to see the score. Employees engage when they know the score and what they can do to win. Leaders who know inspire confidence, respect, admiration, and loyalty so they can lead their teams to success. Founded in 2014, the company is headquartered in Orem, Utah, United States.

Sigstr’s relationship marketing platform allows marketers to turn the billions of 1:1 emails sent every year into powerful brand engagements. With integrations into the leading CRMs, MAPs and Marketing Technologies, Sigstr helps companies get more out of their employee email by turning it into a channel that understands and engages their most important audiences. Leading brands like AT&T, Amazon, SendGrid, Terminus, and Yext are using Sigstr to amplify the value of every email their employees send. Sigstr is headquartered in downtown Indianapolis and is funded by Edison Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Hubspot Ventures, High Alpha Capital, Battery Ventures, 4G Ventures, Elevate Ventures and Grand Ventures.

Drift is a platform that connects businesses with website visitors in real-time using bots and artificial intelligence and obtaining real-time customer feedback through live chat sessions, enabling clients to generate qualified leads, accelerate the sales cycle, and offer a modern buying experience for potential customers.

Privy specializes in e-commerce marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Its mission is to provide the tools, education, and support small e-commerce brands that need to grow their online stores and build thriving businesses. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

HubSpot Ventures invests in early and growth-stage software companies with the potential to deliver unique value to HubSpot’s customer base. We help those companies scale by actively supporting their success in our ecosystem and by providing guidance from our leaders. We back remarkable teams who are building differentiated products in large markets and who share in our mission to help organizations grow better.

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