Outreach, a billion-dollar sales engagement company, has been thriving during the global pandemic. Headquartered in Seattle, the unicorn has helped customers automate and streamline communication with sales prospects for almost 20 years, and business is still booming in 2020.
Some of the company's customers, like DoorDash, DocuSign, and Tableau, have experienced an increase in demand. More than 4,000 businesses now use its tools, including Adobe, Splunk, and SAP, making Outreach the most significant player in its field. Outreach’s increased demand during the pandemic has helped its clients manage the surge of inbound requests as more people use food delivery apps and cloud-based software. This flood of interest is likely what has kept the Seattle-based company from laying off staff while over 360 other tech startups have cut nearly 36,000 positions in the wake of the coronavirus storm.
In June, the company announced it closed a $50 million funding round led by Sands Capital with participation by Salesforce Ventures and new investor Operator Collective. Return investors included Lone Pine Capital, Spark Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Trinity Ventures, Mayfield, and Sapphire Ventures. With this new funding, the company hopes to expand its global presence and invest in product development. It will also invest in AI development, especially for its latest product, Kaia.
"The pandemic has changed sales forever and brought to the forefront the importance of having a sales engagement platform. Products like Outreach that provide high visibility and versatility -- are now required for all sellers in order to be successful," said Manny Medina, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outreach. "As the Sales Engagement category leader, customers expect Outreach to drive transformative changes in sales. With this round of funding, we're excited to accelerate our investments to meet the increasing demand we are seeing in the market while continuing to innovate."
There are also exciting changes happening within the company. Outreach has tapped Melissa Fisher as its new Chief Financial Officer. Fisher joins them from Qualys, a $4 billion provider of cloud-based IT, security, and compliance SaaS solutions.
Fisher has more than 20 years of strategic finance experience, which Medina cites as "crucial" to Outreach's future. "She has extensive experience scaling a publicly-traded B2B SaaS company -- especially in an accelerated growth atmosphere," he added.
Outreach has come a long way since it was founded in 2011. Beginning as a recruitment startup, the business developed into a sales automation firm in 2015 as recruitment became less lucrative. Today, Outreach is valued at $1.3 billion and has raised $289 million over nine rounds of funding.
