Boarding Pass“Samplead is rooted in transforming B2B sales development.”
Boarding Pass
“Samplead is rooted in transforming B2B sales development.”
The company has raised a total of $750,000 to develop its AI-driven sales development representative
“Samplead is an AI-driven sales development representative (SDR) that revolutionizes B2B sales development by offering comprehensive prospecting and personalization at scale and transforming every employee in the company into a sales development machine,” explained CEO Dor Vardi. “Our generative AI agent learns the target audience, identifies high-quality prospects, monitors dormant leads, enriches data, and pinpoints the perfect opportunities to engage, then creates tailored sequences and manages replies and follow-ups for each prospect until a meeting is booked.”
The company started as a bootstrapped project but today has generated more than $1 million only using LinkedIn and email outbound campaigns, resulting in more than 25,000 units sold.
You can learn more about the Samplead journey below.
Company Name: Samplead
Sector: AI
Product/Service description:
Samplead is an AI-driven sales development representative (SDR) that revolutionizes B2B sales development by offering comprehensive prospecting and personalization at scale and transforming every employee in the company into a sales development machine.
Our generative AI agent learns the target audience, identifies high-quality prospects, monitors dormant leads, enriches data, and pinpoints the perfect opportunities to engage, then creates tailored sequences and manages replies and follow-ups for each prospect until a meeting is booked.
Samplead helps sales teams abandon the "spray and pray" approach, focusing on quality over quantity and tapping into unique data sources.
With Samplead, every salesperson could become a full-time SDR, without any hiring/ramping up. We offer a tool that gives full SDR services at one-quarter of the average price.
Founder Bios:
Dor Vardi (CEO): Served 5 1/2 years in the special forces (“Shladag”). Now, he is on active reserve duty. He worked for a few years doing cyber sales for Verint while completing his LLB&MBA in RU (Reichman honors program).
Gadi Vardi (COO): Served 5 years in “Sayeret Matkal.” He is an outbound expert who worked at Cisco and has more than 10 years of experience in B2B sales.
Yotam Nahum (CTO): Data scientist who served 12 years in the Army, his last position was as the head of the AI department in the Israeli Air Force. He is also a DL & NLP Researcher from IDC & Columbia with multiple published research papers. One paper he worked on while in the military was called, "How to Identify and Create Influence Using Text in the Social Media Domain". His domain expertise was exactly the skillset we needed to make the company’s vision a reality.
Gadi and Dor built a bootstrap business that used only outbound for its GTM strategy and generated more than $1 million only using LinkedIn and email outbound campaigns, resulting in more than 25,000 units sold. This was the beginning of Samplead.
Year of Founding: August 2022
Last Investment Round: $600,000
Last Investment Stage: Pre-Seed
Date of Last Investment: July 2023
Total investment to date: $750,000
Investors (leading and all):
Fusion VC (Guy Katsovich)
Raanan Raz (CEO Avalor/Founder at Datorama)
Einat Nemesh (Google)
Nir Yoseph
Yotam Segev (CEO at Cyera)
Kfir Tishbi (CTO at Avalor)
Yadid Ramot (CTO at Comparably)
Randall Lloyd (Grix VC)
Austen Allred(Bloomtech)
Sequoia Scout Fund
Current number of employees: 8
Open positions: Customer Success
How was the idea born?
Dor and Gadi, who are brothers and outbound experts, created Samplead from personal experience. They served 5.5 years in the special forces, with Gadi also gaining over a decade of experience in B2B sales at Cisco. Dor's journey included sales at Verint while completing his LLB & MBA. Four years ago, they built a bootstrap business that relied solely on outbound strategies, using platforms like LinkedIn and email campaigns. This endeavor generated over $1 million in revenue, with more than 25,000 units sold. Our success in outbound strategies stemmed from our own experiences and challenges.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we had to pivot and ask ourselves, 'What are we truly exceptional at?' The answer was clear - 'Outreach.' This realization led to the founding of an SDR as a service agency, aimed at helping other companies navigate the lessons we had learned. Collaborating with 50+ companies and interacting with over 200 GTM teams in Israel and the U.S., we discovered that most B2B sales development teams struggled to meet their quotas (83% missed their quotas in 2022). This pain point was more significant than we initially thought. Additionally, we noticed that the majority of companies were stuck using outdated 'Spray and Pray' methodologies.
Determined to find a better solution, we began compiling all the messages and prospect journeys we had created for our clients into a massive dataset. Real-life testing of various approaches eventually led us to develop a winning methodology that increased our customers' reply rates by a factor of 10.
Our confidence in the need for what we were building was strengthened by an extensive discovery process. We thoroughly tested the idea and collected use cases before writing the first line of code. Perhaps the most telling sign of demand was our MVP, which can be likened to a high-performance engine inside a compact car. Despite this disparity, it attracted paying customers and delivered outstanding results for both us (eating our own dog food) and our clients.
What is the need for the product?
The need for our product, Samplead, is rooted in transforming B2B sales development. Our tool, functioning as an AI-driven sales development representative (SDR), tackles the existing challenges in sales development. Here's how it caters to various crucial needs:
Efficiency and Precision: With an AI-powered approach, we facilitate a shift from the traditional "Spray and Pray" methodology to a quality-focused, precision-driven sales process. We believe in targeting high-quality prospects with tailor-made engagement strategies instead of a mass-market approach.
Cost-Effectiveness: Samplead offers a cost-effective solution by significantly reducing expenses in the sales development process. We aim to replace the need for hiring expensive human SDRs or costly outsourcing services, achieving similar results at a fraction of the cost.
Scaling Sales Development: Our tool empowers every employee in the company to function as an effective sales development machine. It transforms the way sales teams engage, identify prospects, and manage sequences, ensuring an effortless outbound sales process.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Through generative AI algorithms, we help extract valuable insights from various data sources to pinpoint the right prospects and opportunities. By continuously learning and evolving, Samplead provides precise, data-backed recommendations for engagement.
Market Differentiation: Samplead stands out by targeting multiple areas, such as aiding young companies in building outbound strategies without extensive sales teams, catering to the underserved Latin American market, and identifying intent signals among developer communities.
In essence, Samplead serves the critical need in B2B sales development by redefining the sales process through AI-driven, cost-efficient, and highly targeted prospecting and engagement strategies. Our goal is to provide a tool that not only meets but exceeds the current market demands and standards in sales development.
How is it changing the market?
Samplead is transforming the sales landscape by enabling "One-to-Moment" personalization, targeting specific timely opportunities instead of generic outreach. This approach reduces spam while fostering meaningful engagement. Additionally, Samplead facilitates Founder/CXO-led sales, enabling growing companies to build outbound funnels without relying on large SDR teams, fostering an army of sales agents that work in tandem with real individuals.
How big is the market for the product and who are its main customers?
The market for Samplead spans a wide range, targeting B2B companies seeking sales development solutions. With approximately 3 million SDR/BDRs and 8 million AEs in the U.S. alone, our product serves various sectors like SaaS, E-commerce, Cybersecurity, and HR/Recruitment domains. Emerging businesses and enterprises alike are our main customers, as they aim to revolutionize outbound sales without the need for extensive SDR teams while ensuring highly personalized engagement strategies. This represents a substantial market size with enormous growth potential across these diverse industries
Does the product exist already? If not - at what stage is it and when is it expected to hit the market?
As of now, Samplead is well beyond the developmental phase and is actively serving customers. The product has achieved significant milestones: it launched with several prominent design partners consisting of enterprises with 500+ employees and 7+ SDRs. From the launch, 50% of these design partners converted to paying customers. Since the beginning of 2023, it has experienced rapid growth, scaling from $0- $300,000 in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) over the last few months. With completed integrations across multiple platforms and signed partnerships with leading LinkedIn automation tools. Presently, the product is operational and actively being used by 30 paying active users with additional users consistently joining the one-week free trial.
Who are the main competitors in this sector and how big are they?
Samplead operates in a space with direct competition from other Generative AI-powered sales development platforms like oneshot.ai, Kalendar.ai, SellScale, CloseFactor, and regie.ai. These companies, much like us, are in the startup phase and offer features such as prospecting and personalization.
Our unique approach, unique data set, and identity resolution capabilities across different platforms make us different from most of the tools in this space that are focused on text generation based on LinkedIn data.
What is the added value that the founders bring to the company and the product?
Knowledge, experience, industry connections...
What will the money from the round be used for?
R&D and marketing.
In the "Startup Boarding Pass" section, CTech will cover the (relatively) small investments made in companies during the early stages of their existence - and the entrepreneurs and startups who have not yet had the opportunity to reveal their stories to the world. Please use the linked form and fill it out according to the guidelines. This form is intended for startups raising between $500,000 and $3 million from venture capital funds, angels, or official grants from Israeli and foreign institutions. If relevant, someone at CTech will be in touch for follow-up questions.
