A month ago, the launch of sales based on artificial intelligence Gong was not intended to raise more money. The company, which provides sales data through synthetic intelligence that analyzes emails and calls from sellers, had not yet spent the $65 million it had raised last December and the business was booming due to the pandemic with a tripled gain in the first part of 2020. last year puts Gong on the road to about $90 million in profits this year.
But as investors approached Gong, Gong raised $200 million and concluded the deal in just two weeks. The San Francisco-based company has now raised a total of $334 million, preparing for an initial public offering expected over the next 3 years. “People must take the lead in an IPO of the company,” says CEO Amit Bendov, who in the past led the start-up business intelligence company SiSense. Coatue led the D-Series funding, which raises Gong’s valuation to $2.2 billion, up from $750 million after its previous round. Additional investors in the new financing come with Index Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Thrive Capital and existing investors like Sequoia and Battery.
Gong is a developing player in the sales software industry by using herbal language processing to analyze and take notes of all existing conversations in emails, video conferences and phone calls. The software then analyzes this knowledge to provide data such as visitor analysis in a position to be submitted for a product update, that they would possibly be lost or what success vendors do to close deals.
Bendov, 55, founded the company with product manager Eilon Reshef, who in the past co-founded WebCollege corporate cloud in 2015. Both Bendov and Reshef have gained importance on the scene of the Israeli generation. Gong made the cut this year for the forbes’ AI 50 and Next-Billion Dollar home lists; This is the time for companies on this year’s next billion-dollar startup list to cross the $1 billion valuation mark.
First, investors hesitated to invest in Gong, Bendov said, fearing that suppliers would see the software as a form of Big Brother surveillance. The product proved popular, allowing the startup to expand its visitor base to 1,300 companies, adding LinkedIn, PayPal and Slack. “When we started raising money, it wasn’t a walk in the park; today, it’s very easy,” Bendov says.
While many corporations fought Covid-19, Gong took advantage of the fact that distributors were forced to close their donations online. Bendov attributes this increased use to dispersed sales groups that turn to a new centralized location to manage operations, and to suppliers who are retrained on how to build relationships with visitors without face-to-face meetings. “The global is so unstable,” he says. “It’s a terrible time not to know what’s going on with your visitors.”
The new funding will be used for expansion, specifically in Europe, and for the integration of new functions into your product. The company plans to rent one hundred new painters until the end of the year. The product vision is only “10 to 20%,” Bfinishov adds, suggesting that there are many more paintings in the workplace that Gong can remove from your routines or routines. The software’s fundamental artificial intelligence capability (capturing words pronounced directly through a customer, rather than through the ad) would possibly one day apply to a market “much larger than CRM,” Bfinishov says.
“We hope that in two years and part or three we will be at the source of the revenue rate and monetary functionality that will allow us to move to the public,” he says.
I am an assistant editor founded in San Francisco for generation and innovation. I report basically on startups and synthetic intelligence. In the past, I used to make stops in the
I am an assistant editor founded in San Francisco for generation and innovation. I report basically on startups and synthetic intelligence. I used to prevent in The Ringer and Raleigh News – Observer. I graduated in 2019 from Duke University, where I spent some time as editor-in-chief of The Chronicle, the university’s independent news organization. You can email me at kcai [at] forbes.com.