Walnut Raises $2.5 Million in Seed Funding to Enable Remote Sales
The Walnut platform is the first “Wix for sales teams,” allowing teams to demo products without relying on back-end assistance
Walnut, a new platform that empowers customer-facing sales representatives to create, personalize, and manage the sales demo experience, is pleased to announce its launch and the close of its $2.5 million seed round funding.
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The round was led by venture capital firm, NFX, with additional investments from Avishay Abrahami, CEO at Wix; Joe Montana and Michael Ma, partners at Liquid2; Matt Wyndowe, partner at Graph Ventures; Kenny Stone, co-founder at Plangrid; Immad Akhund, former YCombinator PT partner and current CEO at Mercury; and Alon Gamzu, CEO at RoundForest.
“Our mission is to turn inside sales from an art form to a science,” said Yoav Vilner, CEO and co-founder of Walnut. “By doing so we can remove the guesswork from the methods in which tech companies are currently selling their products, mostly relying on human touch and personal talent of salespeople. By fully automating the process, sales teams will be equipped to perform exponentially better, with minimal effort and at a much higher conversion rate.”
Walnut allows for a seamless, and ultimately more effective, sales process while working remotely by removing the reliance on back-end teams, such as graphic designers, product developers, and R&D, when creating sales demos. The no-code, drag-and-drop solution platform also enables sales representatives to become better storytellers by using “storylines” – customizable templates for demos that are based on previously successful ones, specific to each client or vertical a company is trying to sell to.
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Amongst numerous features, the Walnut platform allows sales teams to run product demos as a live experience, even when the real product is offline, to maintain a fail-free demo experience. Users can also add and remove product features, personalize content, and access analytics and insights behind what makes a successful demo.
Vilner said, “22 years ago, Bill Gates went on stage to showcase Windows 98, and was met with the ‘blue screen of death’ in front of the entire world. Many years have passed since that iconic moment, many industries have been re-invented, but one thing hasn’t changed – showcasing your product in real time is a terrifying experience. Over the past six months, we focused our resources on perfecting the combination of multiple technologies to provide sales teams with the tools needed for frictionless customized and optimized product demos. We realized that the need for such a service increased massively since the onset of the pandemic, as remote sales became common practice.”
“Besides having a great team, we found Walnut an appealing investment as they approach a big market and are solving a cross-vertical problem,” said Gigi Levy-Weiss, managing partner at NFX. “Nearly every company has to face the challenges of demonstrating live products during sales calls. Now with the switch to remote sales, the product is seeing a surge in demand from early bird clients and the waiting list is growing every day.”
Designed to be used by both start-ups and enterprises, Walnut is currently being utilized by companies such as Varonis and Namogoo.
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