OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At first, enterprises didn’t know Vivun existed. Now they can’t imagine operating without it.
After a year of rapid growth, Presales software leader Vivun announced it has closed an $18 million Series A round led by Accel with participation from existing investor Unusual Ventures. The latest investment brings Vivun’s total funding to $21 million.
Vivun will use the financing to accelerate its go-to-market efforts and expand its platform, Hero by Vivun, the world’s first software for Presales.
Sometimes called Sales Engineering, Solution Engineering or Field Engineering, Presales is the department that bridges the divide between sales and product. All too often dismissed as “the demo team,” Presales in fact plays a pivotal role in closing deals. Often, buyers will ask for the technical experts in Presales first, after using online resources or free trials to get the basics. At many companies, Presales professionals regularly surpass transactional sales reps and customer success teams in terms of their impact on growth and revenue.
But until recently, Presales had no software dedicated just to them. Nothing for managing their teams at scale or distributing their insights across their organizations. Nothing that enabled their strategic potential. That was Vivun’s opportunity.
Founded in 2018 by veterans of Zuora, Google and SignalFx, Vivun found the market primed and ready, and picked up enterprise customers including Autodesk, Dell SecureWorks and Okta, as well as high-growth startups such as Harness and Fivetran.
“Businesses were starving for a solution like Hero,” said Vivun CEO Matt Darrow. “Presales leaders wanted a ‘home base’ for collaboration, management and measurement. Product teams wanted to tap into the market intelligence Presales gathers in the field. Everyone wanted a quicker route to revenue and product-market fit. Hero had it all.”
"In the past, we struggled to collect metrics that demonstrated the value of Presales to the organization,” said David Jones, Director of Sales Engineering at Dell SecureWorks. “Now we have a platform built specifically for what we do, that makes the entire business more efficient based on metrics we provide. Hero is simply amazing."
Vivun created Hero to transform the way business to business (B2B) companies go to market. In addition to providing sophisticated tools for Presales management, Hero keeps product and sales teams aligned, identifying in-demand product features and automatically alerting salespeople when new product releases could bring opportunities back to life.
“To manage a growing Sales Engineering team in a fast-changing business environment like the one we’ve had in 2020, you need to stay immersed in the data,” said Joe Scherer, head of global Presales programs at Okta. “With Hero, I can keep a close eye on what my team is engaged in, how effective our efforts are and what we need to do differently. It provides much better transparency and detail than I used to get with spreadsheets and CRM. Hero was designed by Sales Engineers for Sales Engineers—and it shows.”
“To get this kind of traction with enterprises at the seed stage is remarkable,” said Steve Loughlin, partner at Accel. “It’s a real testament to the vision of the founding team. They saw that Presales was an unappreciated, underserved resource with enormous strategic potential. We’re huge fans of that vision and are excited to support Vivun through the next phase of their growth.”
For more information, visit Vivun’s website here.
About Vivun
Vivun is the world’s first AI-powered platform for Presales, unleashing their strategic potential and creating a seamless interlock between sales and product. Using Vivun, organizations increase forecast accuracy by leveraging the technical conscience of every deal, find revenue by reviving dormant opportunities and deliver winning products by tapping into the collective insights from the field. Cofounded by Matt Darrow, John Bruce, Dominique Darrow and Claire Bruce, Vivun works with startups like Harness and Fivetran, growth companies like Seismic and Okta and global enterprises like Autodesk and Dell. Visit vivun.com to learn more and request a demo.
About Accel
Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Crowdstrike, DJI, DocuSign, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Freshworks, Jet, Pillpack, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Tenable, UiPath and Venmo are among the companies Accel has backed over the past 35+ years. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses. For more, visit www.accel.com or www.twitter.com/accel.
Media Contact
Chris Ulbrich
Firebrand Communications
T – 415 848 9175
E – vivun@firebrand.marketing