Klue Labs Inc. has raised $4million in funding led by OMERS Ventures with participation from BDC Capital, Vancouver Founder Fund, SK Ventures and angel investors including Ryan Holmes (CEO, Hootsuite), Jonathan Ehrlich (Partner, Foundation Capital) and Daniel Debow (former SVP Salesforce, CEO Helpful).
The idea for Klue, founded by former President of Vision Critical, Jason Smith, and former Sophos Chief Technologist, Sarathy Naicker was born out of a shared problem both encountered in their previous roles.
Klue solves two problems enterprises face in the battle for sales. First, Klue helps product marketers and enablement teams create and keep competitive content up to date. Second, Klue helps salespeople find and leverage that content inside applications they use every day including Salesforce, Slack, Chrome (browser extension), and email.
“Where this really hits home is with B2B enterprise sales teams,” said Smith. “Thirty percent or more of deals are lost directly to a competitor. It stings to lose a deal that should have been won. Klue gives you a continuously updated lens into your competitors’ world so you can better position your company against your rivals, improve your sales strategies with prospects, and ultimately close more deals.”
Naicker believes the key to cracking sales in a hyper competitive marketplace is to use machine learning to unearth key insights that can’t be done on a human scale. “By applying a machine learning intermediary to help scale down the volume of content, and giving enablement teams the tools to deliver, intel is less noisy, more succinct and ultimately more digestible for sales teams to run with.”
“Klue is tackling a real pain point relating to information management, by showing how companies can turn data into an asset that sales teams can use to win deals,” said Sid Paquette, Managing Director, OMERS Ventures. “Jason has assembled a very strong team, complete with deep operational and entrepreneurial experience. We are thrilled to join them on their journey.”
photo credit: Klue Labs