The round, led by Emergence Capital, will accelerate growth for the first and only product that brings real, customizable data into live demos
Saleo, creator of the first and only live demo automation platform, announced today that it has raised $13 million from Emergence Capital and Tech Square Ventures to help revenue teams create unprecedented demo experiences with real data that are so personalized for prospects, they’ve been shown to cut sales cycles in half.
Saleo Live™ transforms any SaaS demo environment to create tailored, data-complete live demos that harness the authentic product without creating a clone or copy. This ensures full functionality of the native app while creating the most compelling demo experience possible. What used to require days or weeks of data creation, design, personalization, and demo maintenance can now be created in moments – and be adjusted by sales in real-time to tell the strongest, most up-to-date story and close more deals.
These dynamic live demos are made possible by Saleo’s generative AI-driven modeling engine, which syncs with the existing native software product to populate, create, and update realistic data inside the existing demo environment. With no code required, sales teams can modify any piece of data to personalize a demo, and have the entire interface and demo flow accurately, reflecting the change.
Leading SaaS companies like Outreach, Drift, Clari, Zuora, and Salesloft are harnessing Saleo Live™ to revolutionize their GTM motions, minimize demo prep time, reduce engineering costs to support their sales teams, and maximize the value of their product offerings.
Saleo-powered demos have proven to be dramatically more effective than the status quo, cutting both sales cycles and demo prep time by 50%, increasing pre-sales NPS 2x, and boosting deal win rates by 74% on average. Before implementing Saleo, sales engineers at customer companies were spending 3.5 hours a week on demo maintenance – a figure that went to zero after. These efficiency gains couldn’t be more vital in an economic atmosphere that has hit SaaS revenue hard.
“With Saleo, we’ve reduced our weekly demo maintenance time by 100%,” said Ryan Splain, Principal Demo Solutions Engineer at Salesloft. “NPS for our global presales team jumped from 4.5 to 9/10, and the Salesloft product has never looked more relevant, data complete, or valuable – something we couldn’t have done without Saleo.”
The Saleo team is excited to expand the platform in the near future, bringing the deep technical work it invested in building its live demo product to solve more pre-sale needs. As the AI engine progressively learns from new data, on which the modeling engine is built, new capabilities will emerge and Saleo’s moat is poised to grow.
“This team has invested an incredible amount of time engineering something extremely complex and difficult to achieve, while making it simple and accessible for users,” said Joe Floyd, General Partner at Emergence Capital, who led the deal for the firm. “As a result, each of Saleo’s customers can harness the power of personalized live demos that are always current and tailored. This technical advantage gives Saleo a huge head start, and already positions it as a leader in the demo automation category.”
Saleo was started in 2021 by Co-founder & CEO Justin McDonald, Co-founder & CPO Daniel Hellerman, and Co-Founder & Lead Engineer Alexey Svetliakov – all of whom have years of experience at leading sales-oriented SaaS companies and deep empathy for the biggest challenges facing modern sales and marketing teams.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Stuart Ford, COO and president at DropIt Shopping
“We’ve worked for years to perfect our AI modeling engine so that it represents a true breakthrough in how demos work — from how they’re created and maintained, to the impact they make on sales and revenue,” says Saleo Co-founder & CEO Justin McDonald. “This has helped us attract some of the biggest brands in SaaS as customers, and with this round, we’re excited to be solving this deeply felt GTM problem for many more teams.”
The team plans to use this new round of funding to expand its product and engineering output, build up its go-to-market organization, and accelerate fast to reach customers everywhere with both its Saleo Live™ and Capture™ products.