Demostack raises $13.3 million in round led by Bessemer Ventures

The Israeli software-startup develops a system that allows companies to remotely create software demos for sale, and recently completed its $4 million seed round in December 2020

Every software company is familiar with that moment when it is asked to prepare a demo, a type of preview presentation that explains its software’s capabilities to a new client. Each such demo requires long hours of work and consumes vast resources. But now, a new startup is looking to change the way companies develop demos. Israel-based Demostack emerged from stealth on Tuesday with an announcement that it had completed a $13.3 million series A round funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Des Traynor (CEO of Intercom), Clark Valberg (CEO of Invision), Tomer Tagrin (CEO of YOTPO), and GTM Fund.

 

The company was founded in 2020 by Jonathan Friedman, Aaron Hakim, and Gilad Avidan and employs 20 people, 14 of whom are based in Israel, and another six in San Francisco. It develops a system that allows people to create software demos for remote sales, and helps revenue teams gain full control, customization, confidence, and insight over their product demos.

 

Demostack co-founders (right to left) Friedman, Hakim, and Avidan. Photo: Demostack

 

At the end of 2020, the company raised $4 million in an unannounced seed round led by Cerca Partners, Amiti Ventures, Operator Collective, Assaf Rapaport (Wiz CEO), Dan Adika (WalkMe CEO), Tomer London (co-founder and CPO of Gusto), Micha Kaufman (Fiverr CEO), Nir Zohar (Wix COO), Slavik Markovitch (VP Product Manager at Palo Alto Networks), Javi Ortega (VP of Sales at Hopin), and Boaz Hecht (VP of Platform Product Management at ServiceNow). All of the investors from the previous round extended their support and participated in the new Series A round too.

 

In the age of Covid-19, remote sales has become the default and delivering great software sales demos remotely is more important that ever. Prospective buyers increasingly expect more personalized and seamless sales experiences. They are also more knowledgeable than ever before about their buying options before entering a sales process, increasing the need to differentiate from competitors early-on in the buying cycle. Demostack aims to give software companies a competitive advantage by enabling them to create and deliver world-class product demos at scale.

 

“The dread of having a demo fail on you is terrifying, I’ve felt it. It can happen at the worst time to the best of us. Even the best demos can fail, but we are determined to make them as fail-proof as possible,” said Jonathan Friedman, co-Founder and CEO of Demostack.

 

 

 

“Demostack gives every software business a powerful competitive advantage, allowing them to better engage their prospective customers, doing away with old school temperamental demos,” said Adam Fisher, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “The response to the company’s product has been resoundingly positive and we are excited to partner with this talented founding team to create and lead a compelling new Software as a Service (SaaS) product category.”

 

Up until now sales teams would have to work with their engineering team to add and manipulate data in their product in order to create custom product demos that are tailored to the prospective customer, often requiring weeks of work. In some cases, key features of the software, such as analytics, are impossible to customize for demos, greatly limiting sales’ ability to showcase their product's value with the prospect.

 

“Every company with a digital product and a sales team is building two products: their actual product and another one for showcasing. Taking away R&D resources to build showcasing products for a demo doesn’t make sense anymore, “ said Friedman. “Your product needs to tell the story of the value a prospect needs to see to become a customer. You can’t force them to imagine it.”