When Sagetap founders Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes started working at an early-stage enterprise software startup, the companies they worked for were using old-fashioned methods such as repeated cold emails and email exchanges to I was surprised that they were trying to sell innovative technology. call.
Mr. Khanna, a former product marketer, and Mr. Hughes, a former sales manager, recognized that these methods were not effective at selling software or getting buyers the solutions they needed. I was there. They were determined to build a better way.
“The executives at the company are frustrated and the emails are being destroyed,” Sagetap CEO Khanna told TechCrunch. “In their own words, they have too many vendors to keep track of. They don't know who they can trust.” According to CB Insights, there are nearly 400 enterprise technology unicorns alone. , and countless other small business startups.
Khanna and Hughes launched Sagetap to solve these problems. He spent a year launching Sagetap, a platform aimed at giving buyers a place to research and weigh their options. Khanna said the strategy helped the company reach $1 million in ARR, but decided Sagetap should be more than just a place for buyers to gather information.
So Sagetap built an AI-powered marketplace based on research. Potential customers can now browse Sagetap's database of software vendors. Both of these software vendors are vetted for their participation on the platform and can pay a subscription fee to remain on the list. For each vendor, buyers have access to information such as public information, purchase price, and anonymized feedback and insights that Sagetap's AI pulls from sales calls made through the platform. The marketplace uses AI to rank vendors and recommend options to users by matching them with companies that fit your criteria.
“This industry is huge, it's a trillion-dollar business,” Khanna said. “It's broken. Buyers and sellers, there's a lot of friction. He looked at what's going on with Uber and he looked at what's going on with Airbnb, which has brought amazing efficiencies.” [through] In the marketplace, I thought this would happen to enterprise sales as well. [industry]”
The San Francisco-based company, which says it is highly profitable and generates revenue through vendor subscriptions and meetings booked on its platform, announced this month that it is leading a deal with VC firms led by NFX and including Uncorrated Ventures and Emergent Ventures. Announced a $6.8 million seed round with participation. The round also included 15 customers who drove the round in the first place, including Oracle, Dell, SecureFrame, and Descope.
“We weren't initially looking to provide funding,” Khanna said. “This was started by our customers. We asked a lot of technology executives to invest and decided to open it.”
Enterprise software encompasses quite a few different categories, and Khanna said Sagetap started with the areas that buyers are most interested in today, such as cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, and DevOps. is.
While Sagetap isn't the first enterprise software marketplace, with large organizations like AWS hosting their own marketplaces, Sagetap is able to use AI to analyze sales calls for recommendations. I think it's outstanding.
Since the AI renaissance really began to pick up steam in 2022, many companies have looked to improve their enterprise software sales processes with AI. But many of them are focused on sellers, rather than offering new models such as using generative AI to craft cold emails or using technology to better target sales prospects. We're just automating parts of the existing model, like sourcing. . What Sagetap does actually looks and feels very different.
Khanna said he has received a number of pitches from venture capital firms aimed at making it easier for people to find companies to invest in. This suggests that the platform could serve as a way for enterprise software startups to market themselves to larger buyers who would otherwise overlook them. While this strategy is great in terms of visibility, it looks like a pay-per-view in many ways. Sagetap only allows vendors to be listed on its platform after vetting them in terms of customer engagement, funding, market traction, etc., and 73% of the vendors contacted are approved to be listed.
But buyers seem satisfied. Over the past five years, Sagetap has grown to over 5,000 buyers and revenue has grown 2.7x year over year.
“The engine is running,” Khanna said. “We are experiencing really strong growth. Next year will be the year we grow our community of technology professionals, increase our visibility in the market, and double down even further.”