Outreach is a venture-backed pioneering startup that provides a sales engagement platform for businesses. The company was founded in 2011 by Manny Medina, Andrew Kinzer, Gordon Hempton and Wes Hather. Outreach is headquartered in San Francisco, California. company.
Back in 2011, when Outreach was established in Seattle, its focus wasn’t centered around sales automation. Originally known as GroupTalent, it began its journey as a recruitment startup, developing software to facilitate talent sourcing and recruitment, with a particular emphasis on catering to the needs of technology companies. The venture progressed well until it encountered a significant setback: by 2015, GroupTalent was left with a mere two months’ worth of funding, and prospects for securing additional investments seemed dim.
This situation swiftly transformed into an unexpected opportunity in its own right. A shift in perspective emerged when businesses expressed an interest in a different offering. As one founder stated, “Companies were telling us, ‘I’m not looking to purchase recruitment software. I need a tool to drive my sales efforts!'” This marked a turning point for the company, leading to a pivotal decision. Without looking back, the startup embarked on a transformation, a change in name that resonated with the shift in focus, and a newfound direction as a sales-oriented entity.
Founded with a mission to revolutionize how sales teams connect and interact with their prospects and customers, Outreach has redefined the sales process by harnessing the power of automation, data-driven insights, and personalized communication. The company’s inception marks a significant shift in the way sales professionals engage with leads and foster lasting customer relationships.
Outreach’s platform helps businesses to identify and engage with potential customers. The platform provides a number of features, including:
- Lead generation: Outreach helps businesses to identify potential customers by providing them with access to a variety of data sources, such as LinkedIn and Salesforce.
- Contact scoring: Outreach helps businesses to prioritize their leads by assigning them a score based on their potential value.
- Email outreach: Outreach helps businesses to send personalized emails to their leads.
- Call tracking: Outreach helps businesses to track the results of their outreach efforts, such as the number of calls made and the number of leads converted.
- Reporting: Outreach provides businesses with reports on their outreach efforts, so that they can see how their campaigns are performing and make necessary adjustments.
Apart from these features, Outreach platform also helps in Sales engagement, deal management, mutual action plans, conversation intelligence, rep coaching, deal insights, pipeline management and sales forecasting.
Outreach is a well-funded startup with a strong team of engineers and sales professionals. The company is well-positioned to help businesses to improve their sales results.
Founding Story of Outreach
If Manny Medina had followed his parents’ advice, he wouldn’t have left his home country of Ecuador to study in the United States. Many years later, when he was leading his first company, a startup that helped find talented people for jobs, he could have just kept trying and hoping things would improve. But if he had done that, his company would have failed.
Manny Medina’s story is a mix of smart decisions and lucky guesses that ended up making him very successful in business.
After finishing his studies in computer science and business, Manny worked his way up at big companies like Amazon and Microsoft. But when he started his own company called GroupTalent, things almost went very badly. He almost had to shut down his business because they were running out of money.
“We were just two months away from going out of business,” Manny remembered.
But the story doesn’t stop there. Manny turned things around when he had a brilliant idea because he had no other choice.
They had been selling a tool to a few recruiters. The customers bought it to figure out how GroupTalent was so successful at getting candidates to respond to their emails. The clients asked the team of GroupTalent questions like, “How is your software getting a 40% reply rate when we only get 5%?” That’s when Manny realized something important. What if they took this tool and sold it to the people who are actually trying to make sales? His partners agreed that this was a good idea, and that’s how Outreach idea came along.
To achieve an unlikely outcome, they built themselves software to equip 3 salespeople to sell like 20. Outreach was born.
Business Model of Outreach – How does Outreach Make Money?
Outreach earns money by selling its platform that helps people with sales to those who are interested in it.
They offer three main products:
Outreach Kaia: This helps salespeople do better by giving them instant information using clever technology. It provides cards with information triggered by artificial intelligence. These cards help salespeople spend less time searching and more time selling. It also helps them answer tough questions from potential customers in real time. With Kaia, teams can see a summary of important meeting points in their email after a meeting, which helps them remember what to do next.
Outreach Commit: Outreach Commit brings predictability to Outreach’s Engagement and Intelligence Platform by helping revenue leaders optimize their pipeline, gain confidence in its health, and forecast with the highest possible accuracy. Outreach Commit analyzes real-time buyer engagement signals to help leaders understand if deals should be included in the forecast, and connects to Outreach’s Sales Engagement and Intelligence Platform for reps to take action on deals. With Outreach Commit, revenue leaders can stop guessing their forecast and start committing it with confidence.
Using the navigation menu to the left, Admins have access to the following Outreach Commit categories:
- Summary
- Forecasting
- Analytics
- Scenario Planner
- Deals
Outreach Success Plans: This is like a tool that keeps track of how well deals are going in one place. The people selling and the people buying can work together on plans that have goals, timelines, and things that need to be done. It helps the teams on both sides of the deal stay organized and know what’s happening.
If someone is interested in knowing the price, Outreach doesn’t tell it on their website. They only give the details if someone asks for a demo. But to give an idea, the cost for these products starts at $100 for each person every month if paid yearly. Unlike some other similar services, there’s no free trial to test it out.
Some of the big companies that use Outreach are Zoom, Okta, Snowflake, and Adobe.
Valuation, Investors and Funding of Outreach
Valuation of Outreach
In June 2021, Outreach announced it had closed a $200 million funding round co-led by investors, Premji Invest and STEADFAST Capital Ventures. This funding round raised Outreach’s valuation to more than $4.4 billion and its total funding to $489 million.
Funding of Outreach
Outreach has raised over $489 million over 8 rounds. It’s first funding round was on May 04, 2015. It’s latest funding round was a Series G round on Jun 02, 2021 for $201 million. Premji Invest and STEADFAST Capital Ventures are the most recent investors.
Here is a table of Outreach’s funding rounds:
|
Round |
Date | Amount | Investors |
| Series A | Oct , 2015 | $9.2 million | Mayfield Fund, MHS Capital, Floodgate |
| Series B | June, 2016 | $17.5 million | Trinity Ventures, Microsoft Ventures, Mayfield Fund, MHS Capital, Floodgate |
| Series C | May, 2017 | $30 million | DFJ Growth, Mayfield, MHS Capital, Microsoft Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Four Rivers Group. |
| Series D | May, 2018 | $65 million | Spark Capita, Sapphire Ventures, DFJ Growth, Four Rivers Group, Mayfield, MHS Capital, Microsoft Ventures and Trinity Ventures |
| Series E | April, 2019 | $114 million | Lone Pine Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Lemonade Capital, DFJ Growth, Four Rivers Group, Mayfield, M12, Sapphire Ventures, Spark Capital and Trinity Ventures |
| Series F | June, 2020 | $50 million | Sands Capital, Operator Collective, Lone Pine Capital, Spark Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Trinity Ventures, Mayfield and Sapphire Ventures. |
| Series G | June, 2021 | $200 million | Premji Invest, Steadfast Capital Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Vista Public Strategies, Salesforce Ventures, Lone Pine Capital, Sands Capital, Mayfield Fund, DFJ Growth, and Trinity Ventures. |
Outreach’s investors are a mix of venture capital firms and strategic investors. The company’s largest investors are Mayfield Fund, MHS Capital, and Floodgate. These investors are all well-known and respected firms with a track record of investing in successful companies.
Competitors of Outreach
Outreach operates in a competitive landscape within the sales engagement and customer communication industry. While Outreach is a leader in this space, there are several other companies that offer similar solutions and vie for a share of the market. Here are some notable competitors of Outreach, along with their key features and offerings:
1. Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a CRM platform that includes a number of features for sales engagement, such as lead generation, contact scoring, and email outreach. Salesforce Sales Cloud is a well-established and widely used platform, but it can be expensive.
2. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a CRM platform that is specifically designed for sales teams. Pipedrive offers a number of features for sales engagement, such as lead generation, contact scoring, and email outreach. Pipedrive is a more affordable option than Salesforce Sales Cloud, but it does not have as many features.
3. HubSpot Sales Hub
HubSpot Sales Hub is a CRM platform that includes a number of features for sales engagement, such as lead generation, contact scoring, and email outreach. HubSpot Sales Hub is a good option for businesses that are looking for a more affordable CRM platform with a strong focus on sales engagement.
4. Clari
Clari offers a revenue operations platform that uses AI to provide sales forecasting, pipeline management, and deal insights. It aims to improve sales visibility, collaboration, and predictability, helping teams make data-driven decisions.
5. VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft offers a sales engagement platform with features such as lead routing, appointment setting, call scripting, and reporting. It focuses on helping sales teams improve efficiency and engagement throughout the sales cycle.
6. SalesLoft
SalesLoft is one of the closest competitors to Outreach. It offers a comprehensive sales engagement platform that focuses on personalized communications, email tracking, cadence management, and analytics. SalesLoft’s platform is designed to help sales teams automate workflows, improve prospect engagement, and drive revenue growth.
It’s important to note that while these competitors offer similar features, the user experience, integrations, pricing, and specific focus areas can vary. The choice of platform often depends on the unique needs of the business, the size of the sales team, and the existing technology stack. Outreach remains a leader in the industry due to its emphasis on data-driven engagement, artificial intelligence, and comprehensive solutions for sales professionals.
