Virginia Venture Partners is a family of seed-stage investment funds placing near-equity and equity investments in Virginia-based technology, life science, and cleantech companies. Virginia Venture Partners invests in companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating significant economic returns for entrepreneurs, co-investors, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. CIT’s family of funds includes: GAP Fund I is a vintage 2004 fund fully invested in a broad array of seed-stage technology companies. Portfolio. GAP BioLife Fund is a seed fund investing exclusively in life science companies. GAP Tech Fund is a seed fund investing in IT and technology companies.

Virginia Venture Partners

Fortify Ventures is a venture capital ecosystem, investing in early stage founders disrupting the status quo. First and foremost, we are a people-focused fund. We place bets on amazing individuals and teams with unique superpowers. We get our hands dirty in the most important areas of a business: long-term planning, leadership development, sourcing talent, and customer discovery. Our reach extends far beyond capital, and our network includes far more than founders. We are an organization of operators, thinkers, executors, and change-makers aligned on a mission to move us one step closer to tomorrow’s world. We operate on the belief that together, we are better.

Fortify Ventures

Headquartered in Canada, GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund identifies and structures investments in retail companies.

GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund

Starting a new research project or company often requires more capital than any one source can give. Since many financial institutions consider startups and R&D â€œtoo risky,â€ some of the most commercially viable projects simply fall through the cracks and die. But not in New Brunswick. At NBIF our venture capital and research funding fills the gap so many innovators fall through, so they can break through.  What sets us apart from traditional capital providers is the way we do business. Instead of lending, we make investments in your companyâ€:tm:s equity. Instead of making research grants, the funding we provide attaches certain rights to the intellectual property you develop so we can help commercialize it.  And the money we make? It goes right back into the Foundation so we can get even more research projects and companies goingâ€”over and over again. Letting us invest in you lets you invest in New Brunswick, too. Itâ€:tm:s what makes us unique.  Whether it starts in a university laboratory, or on the desktop of a budding entrepreneur, our aim is to build New Brunswickâ€:tm:s capacity to innovate and create commercial opportunities for our five strategic industries. With $40 million under management, the investments we've made have allowed our researchers and companies to leverage over $160 million more in additional capital.

New Brunswick Innovation Foundation

Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management software and applications. It is a cloud computing company that provides business software on a subscription basis. They design and develop cloud-based enterprise software for customer relationship management. They focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.

Salesforce

The mission at Build Ventures is to help founders build companies. Period. They provide early stage capital to emerging, game-changing Atlantic Canadian technology companies. Their team has deep operational and investment experience. The startup journey can be challenging, but they know what it takes and they are here to help.  They’re based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and are focused on companies in Atlantic Canada. They like to invest after your seed round. Ideally, you have begun to build a great team, have a product solving a meaningful problem and are working in what is – or one day will become -- a huge market.

Build Ventures

Tech Equity Partners

PSG is a growth equity firm that partners with software and technology-enabled services companies to help them navigate transformational growth, capitalize on strategic opportunities, and build strong teams. PSG brings extensive investment experience, deep expertise in software and technology, and a firm commitment to collaborating with management teams. Founded in 2014, PSG operates out of offices in Boston, Kansas City, London, Paris, Madrid, and Tel Aviv.

PSG Equity

BDC offers financing, consulting services, subordinate financing and venture capital. They focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). BDC's services are available across Canada in both official languages through a network of more than 100 offices. Its head office is in Montreal.

Business Development Bank of Canada

Evergreen Coast Capital is a private equity firm that focuses on investing in technology. It was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.

Evergreen Coast Capital

Aegis Group Partners operates as an investment firm.

Aegis Group Partners

MAVAN Capital Partners is a firm where ideas grow and our team works in cooperation towards a common goal of actively investing in technology companies in Canada and across the globe. By investing in the technology arena, we are connecting our investors and portfolio companies across the planet.

MAVAN Capital Partners

Introhive

Introhive offers a SaaS platform that helps organizations increase revenues and improve customer experience management. Its platform brings relationship intelligence into CRM with data automation and sales acceleration. The company also provides an enterprise relationship management (ERM) solution that helps get relationship insights and boost productivity. It was founded in 2012 by Jody Glidden and Stewart Walchli and is based in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Introhive is a Canadian AI-based customer intelligence platform designed to help large, sales-focused B2B enterprises transform client relationship data into actionable intelligence. Introhive uses AI to build “relationship graphs” to make better-informed sales decisions. The company pitches its relationship graph as similar to LinkedIn or ZoomInfo for customer mapping. It also uses a proprietary algorithm to automatically update sales and client data. Introhive's solutions enhance CRM adoption, support firm-wide collaboration, and drive growth by uncovering contacts, companies, activities, and relationships within a firm’s network.&nbsp;

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

Sales Engagement Platforms

Introhive Unveils AI Account Summaries, Ushering in a New Era of Relationship Intelligence

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Introhive provides both PwC, and their customers, with real-time relationship intelligence and insights for better client experience management.

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

Introhive is a Canadian AI-based customer intelligence platform designed to help large, sales-focused B2B enterprises transform client relationship data into actionable intelligence. Introhive uses AI to build “relationship graphs” to make better-informed sales decisions. The company pitches its relationship graph as similar to LinkedIn or ZoomInfo for customer mapping. It also uses a proprietary algorithm to automatically update sales and client data. Introhive's solutions enhance CRM adoption, support firm-wide collaboration, and drive growth by uncovering contacts, companies, activities, and relationships within a firm’s network.&nbsp;Introhive's AI-powered Client Intelligence Platform claims to increase internal referrals and cross-sell revenue by 30%, improve win rates by 36% by identifying the fastest path to prospects, and increase productivity by 7.5% by reducing time spent on administrative tasks.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of June 2021, the company had around 250,000 users across 90 countries including PwC, Colliers International, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich &amp; Rosati (a US-based law firm), Plante Moran (an accounting, tax, and wealth management firm), and Clark Nexsen.

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 & 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

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

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

Sales workflow automation platforms provide solutions for distributed sales teams

<div>
 Introhive has announced the appointment of Jason Bass as its Chief Operating Officer. Bass brings over 25 years of experience in the technology industry, specializing in sales and client success. Prior to this role, he held the position of VP of Global Business Operations at Anthology and Blackboard.
</div>

Introhive

EDGE Insights

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless