Zukunftsfond Heilbronn supports as a regional venture capital fund in the very busy South of Germany, the development of young innovative companies from start-up to matural stage.   The investment philosophy of Zukunfsfonds Heilbronn is simple: they are investing in young, promising companies with innovative ideas, which have a good market potential and are controlled by a prominent management-team. They are investing in an early stage â€“ from the seed, beyond the start-up to the phase of expansion â€“ in fact as long as it is reasonable for both parties.

Zukunftsfonds Heilbronn

Echobot

Echobot is a B2B focussed online and social media monitoring company based in Karlsruhe, Germany offering a SaaS application. Serving over 300 clients from all industries, the team focuses on crunching the huge amount of data available on the web to generate actionable insights. This helps to measure PR and marketing KPIs and generate new exciting opportunities that otherwise would have been missed. The team made 1st place in the German CyberChampion Awards of 2012 and has numerous contracts with media companies like AxelSpringer or the Agence France Presse (AFP).  After two years of self-sustained growth to about 15 people, Echobot has recently secured a Series A investment from the German 200M€ venture fund ZFHN. The money will be used to accelerate sales in the German speaking markets and introduce several new products based on the owned technology.

Echobot is a sales intelligence platform based in Germany, offering an AI-powered solution that supports the sales process for sales and marketing teams. The platform provides two sets of key data: 1) “deep data” linked to company trade register entries to extract corporate and financial information (consists of 16+ million companies and 46.5+ million contacts across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, and France) and 2) “basic data” containing key company information excluding financial information gathered from business networks and web crawling, (consists of 2.5+ million companies and 15+ million contacts, covering the top 20% of companies per country). It also features B2B lead generation, data enrichment, segmentation analysis, company databases, analytics, and reporting.

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

Sales Engagement Platforms

Echobot and Leadfeeder become Dealfront – a Go-to-Market platform to give companies the data, applications and insights they need to win any European market

Echobot is a sales intelligence platform based in Germany, offering an AI-powered solution that supports the sales process for sales and marketing teams. The platform provides two sets of key data: 1) “deep data” linked to company trade register entries to extract corporate and financial information (consists of 16+ million companies and 46.5+ million contacts across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, UK, and France) and 2) “basic data” containing key company information excluding financial information gathered from business networks and web crawling, (consists of 2.5+ million companies and 15+ million contacts, covering the top 20% of companies per country). It also features B2B lead generation, data enrichment, segmentation analysis, company databases, analytics, and reporting.In June 2022, the company announced it had <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11240">merged with lead generation platform Leadfeeder </a>with EUR 180 million (~USD 189.5 million) provided by growth equity firm Great Hill Partners to support the merger.&nbsp;The company claimed to generate 300+ B2B leads per month, 80% time savings in company research, and increase cross-selling opportunities by 25%.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of June 2022, the company served 8,500+ customers, including Siemens, BabbelMollie, and Kyocera.

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

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;

Salesloft

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

Echobot

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