Vivun was built by Matt Darrow, a guy who cut his teeth in pre-sales at Zuora. He believed that pre-sales teams had a lot to offer to the organization, but there really wasn’t any software to capture that knowledge. That’s why he built Vivun.
The company is helping to define a new software category, which tends to get the attention of investors, Darrow says more than that, the company is fundamentally sound and growing fast.
“I think at the core of it is that we’ve been able to grow and run a business that has just really great fundamentals and metrics. And we’re leaning into a really big opportunity,” Darrow told me.
Among the metric milestones he chose to highlight, in the company’s most recent fiscal year, it grew ARR more than 4x, it surpassed 100 employees and increased customer count by more than 160%. Customers include Snowflake, Genesys and UiPath, among others.
While he didn’t want to discuss specific revenue numbers around that 4x ARR growth, he did give a strong hint that he’s building a substantial company. “We’re on the phase of our journey where our objective over the next year is how do we get to around the $30 million in ARR. So that’s kind of where we are in size and scope,” he told me.
Paul Drews, partner and head of US investments at Salesforce Ventures, which is leading the investment in the company in this round, says a company like Vivun is particularly important to help push sales at a time when traditional sales methods are shifting to buyer-driven processes. And with Salesforce’s focus on sales, the investment from its venture arm makes a lot of sense
“The buying process has just changed a lot over the years from more of a top down process to a bottoms up, where buyers want to get their hands on the product. As part of this evolution, we’ve noticed that the role of pre-sales has really just grown in importance,” Drews said.
He said to this point he hadn’t seen a purpose-built product to address this issue and as an investor seeing someone break new ground really drew him to the company.
The startup just surpassed 140 employees and expects to reach 200 before the end of the year. He says that unlike in 2019 when he was launching the company, today the company has a people/HR team in place to help drive the company’s DEI initiatives. Further, he says that being 100% distributed helps. In fact, they already have employees based in 10 different countries.
The $75 million investment comes as part of the company’s Series C round. In addition to lead investor Salesforce Ventures, new investor Tiger Global also participated along with existing investors Menlo Ventures, Accel and Unusual Ventures. The company reports it has now raised a total of $131 million.