Technology is trying to change and streamline the way different departments in an organization work, from finance departments (fintech), through human resources (HR tech) and marketing (Martech) to sales departments (sales tech). In the world of tools for the sales department, the Israeli unicorn Gong is very well known, who transcribes and analyzes the conversations of sales people in the organization in real time in order to improve their work, provide future forecasts and measure the effectiveness of launch operations.
But Gong is by no means the only Israeli start-up in the sales technology category. Just last week, the Israeli start-up Second Nature, the developer of a bot that simulates sales calls to salespeople, announced the raising of $ 12.5 million. And today (Tuesday) the young start-up Wallnut, which develops software that allows sales teams to create demos of digital products, announces the raising of $ 35 million, which will all go to investing in the company.
Instead of a PowerPoint presentation
Walent was founded in 2020 by Yoav Wilner (CEO) and Danny Friedland (VP of Technology). The pain that the start-up wants to solve is the difficulty of the sales and marketing employees in software companies to create a demo of the corporate product, one that can be shown to customers in sales meetings or displayed on the website.
Demo is not always as trivial a matter as it sounds. It may be a young start-up with an initial product that is not completely stable and the sales people are afraid to reach the customer with it, for fear that it will crash in front of it right at the moment of truth. A puncture of this kind even happened to the great Steve Jobs, when he introduced the iPhone 4 on stage somewhere in 2010 and the device simply could not connect to the wireless network. Jobs then explained that the load of devices connected to the wireless network from the crowd was the reason, but apparently a less skilled salesperson than him would have had a hard time getting out of such a nasty situation.
Another difficulty can arise when salespeople want to add features to a product, even just insert another button, before showing it to a particular customer, but simply fail to get help from the busy development of the matter. Such an interest creates tensions and disagreements in the organization. Having no choice Sales teams are sometimes required to build presentations on the product’s PowerPoint or come up with a video of it, to demonstrate what the product will look like.
Walent’s software wants to give sales people the power to create the product demo themselves using a “No code” -based tool, that is, one that does not require programming experience. “We first disconnect the front end, the user interface of the software, from its rear engine. Then the salesperson can play with the front interface in an editor similar to Weeks’ web editor and using an intuitive interface to design his demo in a very short time,” explains Wilner. “We let the sales people create a specific script that will fit exactly to the customer he is addressing and will also allow him to measure sales effectiveness and generate insights.”
A new category in sales technology
In an article published by the reputed research company Gartner in August, it marked the field of product demonstration as a potential new category in the world of sales technology. This world is also gaining momentum thanks to the adoption by organizations of a “product-led growth” strategy, in which instead of employing an army of sales people who go out to sell the product, they encourage potential customers to be impressed by it (for example through demonstrations) and try it for themselves.
Walent, which has raised $ 56 million since its inception including the current round, is of course not the only one operating in this space. The biggest competitor in the field is the start-up Reprise from Boston, which has raised $ 82 million to date. Another Israeli competitor in this world of technological product demonstrations is the start-up Demostack, which has raised $ 17.3 million to date.
Walent’s current recruitment was led by the American Felicis Fund and was attended by a number of well-known private investors from the country and the world such as the President and VP of Marketing of Salesforce Sarah Franklin; Founder and Vice Chairman of Octa Frederick Crest; Founder and CEO of the American Unicorn Tourism Trafications Ariel Cohen; Founder and CEO of the Israeli Unicorn Papaya Global Einat Gaz; And the founder and CEO of the Israeli Unicorn for security crypto fireblocks, Michael Shaulov.
This is Walent’s second round of funding in less than half a year, after the start-up announced a $ 15 million round last August. Valent has about 100 customers, including giant companies such as Adobe, Dell and NetApp. The company employs 55 people in Israel, the United States and London. In November, the start-up Volent attracted quite a bit of attention on social media when a recruitment video of him starring Mano Cohen, a wedding reality participant at first glance, appeared. Cohen is the company’s marketing manager.
“Our goal is to position ourselves as part of the toolbox for salespeople. Just like today when we talk about customer management system (CRM) we think of Salesforce and when we talk about recording conversations we think of gong, so when we talk about creating a demo they will think of Walent,” says Wilner.