People.ai raises $60 million from ICONIQ and Andreessen Horowitz

People.ai uses artificial intelligence to automate and speed up sales operations and customer relations.

The AI startup said Tuesday it has raised another $60 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ Capital.

It was People.ai's second funding round in 7 months: In late 2018, it raised $30 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories

People.ai, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to automate and speed up sales operations and customer relations, just raised another $60 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ Capital — the latter of which is perhaps best known as a wealth manager for Mark Zuckerberg.

ICONIQ led the Series C funding, which was announced Tuesday and comes just seven months after the startup raised $30 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

People.ai, which is based in San Francisco and has about 145 employees, lets businesses automate a big chunk of a sales process, including logging and organizing customer information.

Founder and CEO Oleg Rogynskyy said the idea for the company, which he launched in 2016, was based on the frustrations he went through as a software salesman.

Fixing sales inefficiencies

“I started my career as a salesperson so I experienced all the inefficiencies that salespeople are going through today,” he told Business Insider.

Before launching People.ai, Rogynskyy had led the sales team at data analytics company Lexalytics in Silicon Valley and Semantria in Montreal. He also served as vice president of marketing at H20.ai, an artificial intelligence startup.

He also worked in sales for a small content management company in Montreal where his team was ordered to manually insert data into the company system. That was one of the frustrating experiences that led him to launch People.ai, which he developed as a fellow at the famed startup accelerator Y Combinator, he said.

To put a finer point on it, most sales reps get to spend only 30% of their time with clients or would-be clients. They end up spending the other 70% on admin work, shifting through the customer relations management system and “trying to figure out what to do next,” he said.

He said People.ai's technology dramatically reduces time spent on sales admin work, the equivalent of giving “every salesperson back one day a week on their calendar which is significant.”

AI that helps you find new opportunities

On Tuesday, the company also unveiled a new feature that takes its AI-powered platform to another level by giving sales teams actionable insights by crunching data from daily operations and activities, including email traffic, phone conversations or from collaboration tools, such as video-conferencing tool Zoom or the Slack work chat app.

“We provide the salesperson with intelligence, with the best action that can be taken next,” Rogynskyy told Business Insider. The feature, dubbed “the Wire,” serves as a “co-pilot” for a sales rep “whispering in your ear what's around the curve,” he added.

For example, the People.ai system could flag that a client rep has changed jobs based on a new email signature, and send a message to a sales rep to reach out to that client rep to explore possible new deals.

People.ai says its AI platform, which counts Red Hat, Lyft and Splunk among its top customers, has processed 300 million sales activities and near 40 million contracts.

Peter Levine, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said the venture capital firm found People.ai's technology “very compelling.”

“The notion of using existing data inside an enterprise for second-order benefit was an incredible insight that People.ai had,” he told Business Insider.

Got a tip about People.ai or another tech company？

People.ai使用人工智能来自动化和加速销售运营和客户关系。人工智能创业公司周二表示已经从投资者那里筹集了6000万美元，其中包括Andreessen Horowitz和ICONIQ资本。这是People.ai在7个月内的第二轮融资：2018年末，它在Andreessen Horowitz的带领下筹集了3000万美元。参观Business Insider的主页以获取更多故事。 .ai是一家利用人工智能实现自动化和加速销售运营和客户关系的创业公司，刚刚从投资者那里筹集了6000万美元，其中包括Andreessen Horowitz和ICONIQ Capital--后者可能是马克扎克伯格的财富管理者。 ICONIQ领导了C系列融资，该融资于周二宣布，仅在创业公司在Andreessen Horowitz领导的一轮融资中筹集了3000万美元后的七个月。该People.ai总部位于旧金山，拥有大约145名员工，让企业自动化大部分销售流程，包括记录和组织客户信息。创始人兼首席执行官Oleg Rogynskyy表示，他在2016年推出的公司的想法是基于他的挫折感作为软件推销员经历过。 确定销售效率低下因为“我开始了我的销售人员职业生涯，所以我经历了销售人员今天所经历的所有低效问题，”他告诉Business Insider。在启动People.ai之前，Rogynskyy曾经领导硅谷数据分析公司Lexalytics和蒙特利尔Semantria的销售团队。他还曾担任人工智能创业公司H20.ai的营销副总裁。他还曾在蒙特利尔的一家小型内容管理公司从事销售工作，他的团队被要求将数据手动插入公司系统。他说，这是导致他推出People.ai的令人沮丧的经历之一，他是着名的创业加速器Y Combinator的开发者。 为了给它更好一点，大多数萨尔s代表只花30％的时间与客户或潜在客户合作。他们最终将其他70％用于管理工作，转移到客户关系管理系统并“试图找出下一步该做什么”。他说，People.ai的技术大大减少了销售时间管理工作，相当于“每个销售人员每周一天在他们的日程表上重新开始工作。”人工智能可以帮助您找到新的机会。周二，公司还推出了一项新功能。通过从日常运营和活动（包括电子邮件流量，电话交谈或协作工具，如视频会议工具Zoom或Slack工作聊天应用程序）处理数据，为销售团队提供可操作的见解，从而将其人工智能支持的平台提升到另一个层次。 Rogynskyy告诉Business Insider说：“我们为销售人员提供智能，并采取下一步可采取的最佳行动。”他补充说，这个名为“电线”的功能可以作为销售代表的“副驾驶员”，“在你的耳边低声说道。”例如，People.ai系统可以标记出这一点。客户代表根据新的电子邮件签名更改了工作，并向销售代表发送消息以联系该客户代表以探索可能的新交易。 People.ai说其人工智能平台，计算红帽Lyft和Splunk是其顶级客户之一，已经处理了3亿笔销售活动和近4000万份合同。来自Andreessen Horowitz的普通合伙人Peter Levine表示，风险投资公司发现People.ai的技术“非常引人注目”。“使用企业内部现有数据获取二阶效益的想法令人难以置信People.ai有这样的见解，”他告诉Business Insider。你有关于People.ai或其他科技公司的提示吗？