We're excited to announce that we've raised a $12M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins. We'll be using this round to accelerate our mission to build a GTM platform purpose-built for product-led growth. We're also excited that Salesforce Ventures and Twilio have invested in our Series A underscoring the magnitude of the industry interest in product-led growth.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) & Today's GTM Tooling

Today's fastest growing software companies - Twilio, Slack, Calendly, Netlify - leverage a product-led GTM. They let users try products right away and put them in control of their buying journey. Now, software is adopted inside companies by end-users and championed by those who feel the pain. This is a fundamental shift from traditional top-down GTM motions.

The PLG customer journey begins with a free signup and the account grows as the user and their teammates find value with the product. Companies struggle to stay on top of thousands of sign ups that are all at different stages of their journey. It's no longer acceptable to hope your marketing drip emails will convert these sign-ups. To be successful, sales teams need to easily prioritize who to talk to, quickly get context, and effortlessly engage. We built Calixa to solve this.

There's a myth that PLG means no Sales. It's simply a new motion that evolves how you work with customers. You're now talking to users of your product, showing them how to get even more value, and accelerating their adoption. That's why it's critical that you arm your sellers with insights into both who and how customers are using your product.

We're still early in the early days of PLG. We've had initial breakout stars who have shown us the promise of this GTM motion. The next generation of software companies will all be built product-led from Day 1. The companies that will be most successful will use a GTM stack purpose-built for PLG. We believe the foundation of that stack is Calixa.

Calixa: Powering Product-Led Sales

With our public launch in March of this year, companies finally have a GTM tool purpose-built for product-led growth. Software companies like Netlify, Voiceflow and Courier are relying on Calixa to power their product-led sales motion… and it's really paying off. Netlify's Director of Sales Development, Devin Oliver, says that,

'Calixa cuts down our time from insight to action. There is a huge efficiency and conversion gain with product qualified leads that Calixa identifies.'

Our Series A enables us to grow our team and accelerate our mission. Our current focus is building the foundational layer that enables companies to easily prioritize, engage, and convert their product qualified leads. We've optimized our product for a high-velocity sales workflow for companies that need to manage large self-serve funnels (eg Netlify has millions of end users).

The exciting thing we've also discovered along the way is that start-ups, even early in their lives, benefit from Calixa.  10s of signups soon become 100s of sign ups and, soon enough, you're starting to have users slip through the cracks. With Calixa, you can ensure that your startup stays focused on customers and is prioritizing the most engaged sign-ups. We're committed to Product-Led companies of all sizes. That's why we've created a generous free plan for startups. Just sign up and start using us. We're betting that your startups will be the next breakout Product-Led successes.

The Rise of the Modern Data Stack

The Modern Data Stack is bringing about a re-architecture of business apps and workflows to be centered on the data warehouse. Companies are increasingly relying on the data warehouse as the single source of truth. GTM teams and their tooling need to be able to leverage the warehouse data to ensure they're operating off a company's gold-standard data.

Today, we are also announcing the beta of support for the Modern Data Stack. Companies can now directly connect their Snowflake or Google BigQuery data warehouses to Calixa. You're able to sync accounts, users, events, usage data, and custom objects. Data teams now can easily empower their GTM counterparts with self-serve reporting, dashboards, 360° customer views, and automated workflows. We also support leading Reverse ETL providers Hightouch and Census.

Sign up for the data warehouse beta.

The Right Partners: Kleiner Perkins, Salesforce,  & Twilio

We couldn't be more thrilled to deepen the relationship we have with Kleiner Perkins. Bucky Moore who has led both our Seed and Series A will be joining our Board of Directors. He and the Kleiner Perkins team have been amazing partners from the beginning.

Joining this round are two companies that we admire greatly: Salesforce and Twilio. We're thrilled that each has shown great enthusiasm for product-led growth. Even better, each of these companies make products important to our joint customers. Salesforce is the #1 CRM that our customers use and Twilio Segment is the #1 Customer Data Platform that our customers use. Both have been integrated into the Calixa platform from day 1.

Thanks!

Fred and I couldn't be more thankful for all the support from our customers, investors, angels, family, and friends. We've come a long way in the last 7 months but this is just the beginning.

One of the things we're most proud of is the team we are building. We've been exceptionally lucky to find people who are both good at what they do and are good people. If that sounds like you, come join us! Feel free just to email me if easier (thomas@calixa.io).

Thanks again!

Thomas and Fred

P.S. As always, you can sign up for Calixa on your own and start using today. If you want some help getting started, don't hesitate to reach out. (thomas@calixa.io)