Apollo.io, which is developing sales intelligence and engagement software for business-to-business companies, brought in $32 million in Series B funding to continue with its go-to-market acceleration approach.
Tribe Capital led the round and was joined by NewView Capital and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. The latest funding gives the San Francisco-based company $40 million in total funding since it was founded in 2015, co-founder and CEO Tim Zheng told TechCrunch.
Zheng previously founded a company in the education space doing something similar that helped customers send more targeted marketing emails. When friends saw how well it worked, they wanted a tool like that for their respective industries, he said.
He says the subscription-based service has amassed over 2 million business contacts to help customers more accurately identify prospective customers using advanced algorithms and more than 200 unique business attributes. The tool displays this information automatically when visiting LinkedIn profiles and will also alert you with new contact information if someone changes jobs or is promoted.
“Usually the way to generate sales is to find the pipeline of customers, and to do that outbound, you have to figure out the right people, and we streamline and automate that process,” he added. “Instead of setting up Apollo in months, it takes minutes and a couple of clicks.”
Sales reps that were averaging 10 to 12 meetings can look to book three times that amount using Apollo, Zheng said. To date, the company has over 1 million user signups and 9,000 paying customers. It has grown its user base by more than 200% and tripled revenue in the past 12 months and maintained profitability for more than 18 months.
He believes there is still a big part of the market that is untapped, and the new funding will enable the company to accelerate marketing, engineering and product development. The company also intends to double its employees to 300 in the next 12 months.
As part of the investment, Sri Pangulur, partner at Tribe Capital, joined Apollo.io’s board. Pangulur was tracking the company over the last year and the firm decided to lead the round after seeing its adoption and using the product itself.
“As we emerge from the pandemic, buyers want an Amazon-like experience where companies are anticipating their needs. You need user data to better drive the sales experience, and as it evolves more personalized capabilities as well,” he added. “Apollo has some unique positioning in that they are doing product-led growth, but also covering the data stack as well.”
