Highspot Raises $35M as Demand for Sales Enablement Skyrockets

Major Investment Fuels Global Expansion in Rapidly Growing Market

Highspot, the industry’s most advanced sales enablement platform that sales reps love, today announced the close of a $35 million Series C round led by new investor OpenView with participation from Madrona Venture Group, Salesforce Ventures and Shasta Ventures. To date, Highspot has raised a total of $64 million in funding.

The new investment will fuel Highspot’s market expansion. The demand for sales enablement technology has skyrocketed, with the percentage of companies with a dedicated enablement person, program or function having increased by 180 percent last year, according to the 2017 CSO Insights Sales Enablement Optimization Report.

With the company’s deep understanding of the market need, superior technology and customer-first focus, Highspot has seen more than 300 percent user growth year-over-year and experiences 90 percent adoption and usage on average.

“Highspot is the ideal investment for us, given our firm’s focus on product led growth and rapid market expansion,” said Blake Bartlett, a Partner at OpenView who will join Highspot’s Board of Directors. “After speaking with Highspot’s customers, it was clear that the company is changing the sales enablement landscape in a fundamental way by creating a product that is indispensable to a seller’s daily workflow.”

Highspot is helping companies win more business and achieve unparalleled ROI on sales content and training investments by solving crucial needs for sales, sales enablement and marketing teams. With Highspot’s best-in-class enablement capabilities, teams can effectively:

Organize, personalize, discover and share content
Prepare sellers for any conversation with readiness materials
Engage buyers with personalized content and track engagement
Identify and optimize best practices with end-to-end analytics

“Having achieved a leadership position in the sales enablement space, Highspot is poised to scale globally,” said Robert Wahbe, Highspot co-founder and CEO. “Our growing team is attracting industry top talent, which is accelerating innovation and fueling our hyper growth. We are excited to partner with OpenView, and we look forward to taking our sales enablement solution that sales reps and marketers love to new markets.”

Sales and marketing leaders now regard sales enablement as a competitive necessity and a new standard for doing business, as B2B buyers expect more from their engagements with sellers. CSO Insights reports that salespeople at companies with a formal sales enablement charter achieve 1.3 times higher quota attainment than those approaching sales enablement informally.

As a leading platform for enterprise companies, Highspot stands apart with artificial intelligence technology that powers industry-leading search and recommendations, a flexible approach to content organization, advanced analytics, dynamic guided selling experiences and more than 50 certified technology integrations.

“Highspot discovered a market pain point and answered with an innovative, advanced sales enablement solution,” said Matt Garratt, Managing Partner at Salesforce Ventures. “We are proud to be partnered with a pioneering company that has highlighted the importance of sales enablement.”

The investment has followed a year of notable achievements for Highspot, including being recognized as the Best Sales Enablement Platform and the Best Content Management Platform by the CODiE Awards, winning the MarTech Breakthrough Awards’ Best Overall Sales Enablement Solution category, earning recognition as one of Seattle’s Best 100 Companies to Work For and being named a LinkedIn Top 50 Startup.

About Highspot

Highspot gives businesses a powerful sales advantage to engage in more relevant buyer conversations and achieve their revenue goals. Through AI-powered search, analytics, in-context training, guided selling, and 50+ technology integrations, the Highspot platform delivers enterprise-ready sales enablement in a modern design that sales reps and marketers love. With 90 percent average monthly recurring usage and global support in 125 countries, Highspot is the most trusted solution for sales enablement.

About Madrona

Madrona is an early stage venture capital firm in the Pacific Northwest. The firm invests in technology entrepreneurs and companies, and works with them to build their businesses. Madrona manages nearly $1.6 billion and was an early investor in companies such as Amazon.com, Apptio, Smartsheet, Rover.com, and Redfin.

About OpenView

OpenView, the expansion stage venture firm, helps build rapidly expanding software companies into market leaders. Through our expansion platform, we help companies hire the best talent, acquire and retain the right customers and partner with industry leaders so they can dominate their markets. Our focus on the expansion stage makes us uniquely suited to provide truly tailored operational support to our portfolio companies.

About Salesforce Ventures

Salesforce is the fastest growing top five enterprise software company and the #1 CRM provider globally. Salesforce Ventures—the company’s corporate investment group—invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, helping companies connect with their customers in entirely new ways. Portfolio companies receive funding as well as access to the world’s largest cloud ecosystem and the guidance of Salesforce’s innovators and executives. With Salesforce Ventures, portfolio companies can also leverage Salesforce’s expertise in corporate philanthropy by joining Pledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 275 enterprise cloud startups in 17 different countries since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.

About Shasta Ventures

Shasta Ventures is a leading early-stage venture capital firm partnering with bold, creative entrepreneurs who are passionate about building epic products and amazing experiences. Founded in 2004, Shasta Ventures has more than $1 billion under management investing in enterprise and consumer companies with a deep focus on emerging platforms. With offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, Shasta supports companies with early customer validation indicating founders that are building something special. These include Apptio, Dollar Shave Club, Mint, Nest, Zuora and many promising private companies such as Anaplan, Eero, Glint, Leanplum, Nextdoor, Smule and Turo.

Contact:
Elena Edington
206-817-4339
elena.edington@highspot.com

SOURCE Highspot

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