LeadGenius, the first end-to-end sales-acceleration solution that provides sales organizations with a more efficient way to prospect, announced today that it has raised a $6 million Series A funding round. The round, which was led by Sierra Ventures, will be used to scale the LeadGenius team and further develop its core solution. Several other institutional and angel investors participated in the round including Kapor Capital, Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, Aaron Harris, FundersClub, Fuel Capital, Bee Partners, Sam Altman, Scrum Ventures, CRCM, 500Startups, and Scott Bannister.
'With its sales-acceleration solution, LeadGenius has created the ultimate in demand-generation automation. This more efficient way to prospect is the holy grail and the next billion-dollar opportunity,' said Tim Guleri, Sierra Ventures. 'We're thrilled to participate in this round, and we're confident that LeadGenius will continue along its successful trajectory.'
Over the past year, the 12-person LeadGenius team grew revenues three-fold and secured 120 customers. Part of that growth contributed to large contracts, made possible by the solution's ability to scale on-demand.
Companies realize lead generation, data enrichment, and targeted prospecting require a lot of time, effort, and an ongoing investment. And all too often, time and energy are spent on this phase of the sales process, rather than on actually closing deals. To assist this sales cycle, many companies, especially those with limited resources, are turning to automated sales-acceleration technology. And while many of the solutions available today can be helpful, they're missing a key element -- human intelligence.
LeadGenius has found that to crack the code in demand and lead generation, two fundamental techniques need to come together. First, you have to have a strong data-analytics machine that can generate lead data at scale, while cleansing and annotating it. Second, you have to have strong prospecting, qualifying, and outreach techniques, which is where human intelligence comes in.
'LeadGenius' DNA is built around big data, crowd computing, and an interest in providing jobs to underserved communities around the world. Our technology uses crowdsourced labor to verify lead data at scale and discover relationships between potential buyers and sellers. That's our secret sauce,' said Prayag Narula, CTO, LeadGenius. 'While CRMs have begun making sales processes more intelligent, we apply a layer of human intelligence with our virtual workforce, bridging the gap between prospecting and selling in a way that purely automated tools can't deliver.'
LeadGenius' virtual workers are educated and skilled, as well as carefully vetted before being accepted - fewer than one in ten applicants pass the screening process. LeadGenius pays fair wages and aims to mirror the offline workplace, giving workers the opportunity to advance in compensation and responsibility based on performance. In turn, these individuals help LeadGenius generate the most accurate leads for its customers.
'Raising this round was a big step for us,' said Anand Kulkarni, CEO, LeadGenius. 'In the months ahead, we'll be investing heavily in the product itself to streamline the customer experience, expand our ability to collect and reason about data at scale, rapidly grow our global worker community, and introduce LeadGenius to more and more sales and marketing teams.'
In addition to the Series A, LeadGenius closed a $2.2 million seed round in October 2013, bringing the total raise to $8.2 million. To learn more about LeadGenius, please visit https://leadgenius.com/.
About LeadGenius
LeadGenius is an end-to-end sales-acceleration solution that provides sales organizations with a more efficient way to prospect. Delivered as a software service (SaaS) and powered by a combination of data analytics and human intelligence, LeadGenius helps sales teams grow and scale across all levels of the sales process. LeadGenius' crowdsourced labor -- its virtual workers -- consists of qualified research and outreach professionals located in the United States and around the world.
Based in Berkeley, CA, LeadGenius was founded by Anand Kulkarni, Prayag Narula, and Dave Rolnitzky while in a graduate program at UC Berkeley. LeadGenius is backed by, Sierra Ventures, Kapor Capital, Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, Aaron Harris, Andreessen Horowitz Seed, Bee Partners, Better Ventures, First Light Ventures, FundersClub, Fuel Capital, CRCM, Sam Altman (President of Y Combinator), Recruit Strategic Partners, Scrum Ventures, Zillionize, Jason Calacanis, Paul Buchheit, Scott Banister, David Sacks (founder of Yammer), Aaron Levie (CEO of Box), SV Angel, Y Combinator, and 500Startups.