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Databook Secures $50M Series B at a $550M Valuation to Transform Enterprise Selling
Consultative sales intelligence leader secures strategic investment to rapidly expand global footprint following 4 consecutive years of 300% growth
PALO ALTO – Feb. 14, 2022 – Databook, the market and technology leader in consultative sales intelligence, today announced that it has secured $50 million in Series B funding. The oversubscribed round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from DFJ Growth and previous investors Threshold, Microsoft’s Venture Fund M12, Salesforce Ventures and Haystack. The funding will be used to accelerate hiring across all areas of the business and support growth into Europe and APAC including new industries such as banking, telecommunications, and consumer goods.
The funding comes at a time of explosive growth for Databook as enterprises around the world embrace the company’s AI-powered platform to simplify strategic selling. Databook’s client base currently generates more than $300 billion in sales revenue each year and represents 50% of the total enterprise software sellers in the world. In the last two years, the company has seen a 27x increase in valuation as more businesses utilize its platform to empower go-to-market teams with account-specific insights and accelerate sales success.
Databook has also made a series of strategic executive appointments in the past year in preparation for its next phase of accelerated growth. This includes CTO Neil Smith, who joined from Google where he led the Research and Machine Intelligence group focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and SVP of Product Tamar Shor, who joined from Treasure Data, the market-leading enterprise customer data platform. Other recent executive appointments include technology veterans from leading enterprises who define global business success including Accenture, Salesforce, and Oracle.
“Despite decades of investment in account-based technology and sales training, enterprise sales and marketing remains woefully inefficient,” said Anand Shah, CEO of Databook. “To create leads and close deals, every member of the go-to-market team must function as a strategic consultant for their accounts. However, developing these points of view is incredibly time consuming and requires sophisticated analytical research resources that slow down, and often derail, the sales process. Databook shortcuts the path to strategic partnerships by empowering any sales rep to quickly calculate customer needs, solve for individual business outcomes, and become proactive business advisors.”
“Databook fills a critical hole in the account-based sales marketplace allowing its customers to predictably leapfrog their competition with regards to sales efficiency and success,” said Elliott Robinson, Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners who has joined the Databook Board of Directors. “The market demand for this solution is palpable and is reflected in Databook’s impressive growth. We’re thrilled to welcome Databook to the Bessemer portfolio.”
Drive Peak Sales Performance in a Digital World
As customers spend more time in online channels, digital selling has become even more critical to the enterprise. A recent Harvard Business Review article noted that sales success requires tailoring connections at every step of the buying cycle based on the knowledge and preferences of buyers, which are rapidly evolving.
To date, most account-based sales and marketing technologies have focused on intent data, list development, and targeting — but fall short of supporting the development of strategic insights, relevant business use cases, and personalized content needed to sell solutions to executive buyers. In fact, 88% of salespeople say current economic conditions make it important to anticipate customers’ needs. Databook uniquely solves this challenge by providing every rep with the user-friendly tools they need to become valued, strategic advisors to their client – with the click of a button.
The Databook platform integrates AI- and NLP-driven technology to create unique account and solution specific insights with the same level of relevancy and value provided by professional consulting firms. Using this intelligence, the platform connects the dots for sales and revenue teams by serving up custom content needed for account planning, executive preparation, value architecture, ABM and customer presentations. On average, sales teams using Databook achieve 3x more pipeline, 2.5x larger deals and 1.5x faster cycle times.
DEI as a Cornerstone of Success
Alongside its rapid growth in sales, the company has made a commitment to DEI as it looks to scale its team over the next year. Already a diverse team, 38% of the company, 56% of the leadership team, and 40% of the board of directors is comprised of traditionally underrepresented communities in technology.
Additional Comments: DFJ Growth, Microsoft, Salesforce
- “Databook’s clear vision and relentless execution are changing the way that large companies sell to their biggest accounts,” said Sam Fort, Partner at DFJ Growth who has joined Databook as a Board Observer. “Anand and his team stand out on all fronts: technology, market opportunity, and operational excellence. It is extremely unusual for a company at this stage to be so capital efficient while growing at such a high rate, and DFJ Growth is excited to support Databook in dominating this new category as it capitalizes on this new round of funding.”
- “Databook has been a valuable, sales-enabling partner in driving the digital transformation and revenue growth within our US business,” said Tracy Galloway, Corporate Vice President & COO leading Marketing & Operations at Microsoft US. “With Databook’s unique insights and account planning capabilities, our sales teams can consistently anticipate their customers’ needs and drive value-based discussions – at scale – which in turn has resulted in deeper customer connections and sizable incremental revenue.”
- “Databook’s platform is a forcing function to up-level the business acumen of your reps, help them prioritize their accounts, and aim their entire sales effort squarely at the business problem that it aims to solve,” said Frank Perkins, AVP Enterprise Sales at Salesforce. “Databook will revolutionize how you do account planning and how you prepare your reps to sell into their Accounts. And it does all of this in a way that is entirely accessible to the average sales rep. Game. Changer.”
“Databook fills a critical hole in the account-based sales marketplace allowing its customers to predictably leapfrog their competition with regards to sales efficiency and success. The market demand for this solution is palpable and is reflected in Databook’s impressive growth. We’re thrilled to welcome Databook to the Bessemer portfolio.”
ELLIOTT ROBINSON
PARTNER, BESSEMER VENTURE PARTNERS
About Databook
Databook is the world’s first AI-powered consultative sales intelligence platform. Dubbed “Moneyball for Sales”, Databook was founded in 2017 to give enterprise sales representatives and go-to-market teams a differentiating advantage. Today, leading enterprise companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Databricks rely on Databook to help their teams engage as experts – improving the buying experience for customers and accelerating revenue acquisition.