Saleswhale started as a side project. If I were to be really honest, it felt like a toy at times. It was a labour of curiosity by my co-founders, Venus, Ethan, and myself.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a journey that led to us getting accepted by Y Combinator, raise millions in venture funding, and sign on Fortune 500 and Cloud 100 companies as happy customers. I never imagined that I would spend the better part of half a decade on this “toy project”.
That we would assemble a team of really smart, thoughtful and dedicated people. Or that it would end up becoming the best professional experience of my life.
What a rush.
Despite all these, we have only just begun to realize our full potential and purpose: our mission to use AI to automate drudgery for revenue teams (and provide a better experience for their customers).
Today’s announcement - that 6sense will be acquiring Saleswhale, marks the next step in our journey. It's a huge stepping stone towards us realizing our mission.
Before I continue, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to our team members, customers, investors, and partners for being a part of this journey. We couldn't have done this without you.
The context behind our decision
I’m convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the best thing for Saleswhale, and our team. Let me explain why.
When I wake up in the morning, I’m propelled by two things:
First, our mission.
Using AI to automate drudgery, to provide a better experience for customers, has always been top of mind for me. I believe that AI can reduce a lot of the mundane, repetitive tasks - so we can free up humans to bring their best self to work.
It has been extremely gratifying to see what started as a crazy vision, take on a life of its own. Converting marquee customers like InVision, Sage, LaunchDarkly, Randstad and Cisco, over to our movement.. delivering tremendous value for their revenue teams, has been truly surreal.
Second, I want Saleswhale to be a great place to work for our team members.
Now, this doesn’t mean that Saleswhale is a cushy place to work at.
Rather, I hope that team members would look back and go, “Whoa, that was really one of the best teams I’ve worked with - we had a shared sense of purpose, we solved impactful problems for our customers, and I’ve stretched and grown so much.”
Mission, and team.
This is what I focused on, because it was what I craved when I first started my career: A clear sense of mission, a great team to work with, and an opportunity to be wildly successful in pursuit of said shared mission.
This, above all else, is the most important driver behind today’s announcement.
Why 6sense?
When Viral, 6sense's CTO, first reached out - to see if we were interested in joining forces, I was naturally tentative.
But as we spoke, and compared our product roadmaps, it didn’t take long before we realized we had virtually identical visions.
We realized that we had similar ideas on what the market needed, and our products actually converged on solving the same problem for customers: using AI to help companies create, manage and convert pipeline into revenue.
Essentially, we are both trying to do the same thing, but coming at it from different angles.
6sense focused heavily on upstream data and orchestration.
Saleswhale focused more on the last-mile execution.
We literally had each other's product features in our respective product roadmaps.
Now, from all the conversations I have with our customers, I know that this combination of insight and execution is something the market is very hungry for.
So the opportunity to go a lot faster, take this market together by joining forces, and provide a lot more value for customers, was very compelling to me.
The second reason is the 6sense team and culture.
I’ve always believed that culture is a highly leveraged driver of performance and differentiation. It’s the one differentiator that competitors cannot copy.
At Saleswhale, our culture is a huge contributor to our success. Our culture helps us to have difficult & honest conversations, hold each other accountable, but remain supportive and have each other’s back. This trust allows us to take intelligent risks, and out-innovate our competition.
Here's the thing - acquisitions really are an assimilation of two cultures.
This was one of the reasons I was initially tentative.
However, my concerns dissipated when I met with the 6sense leadership team - JZ, Viral, Rob, Premal, Amar and Latane.
The first thing that struck me was that I was speaking to a bunch of really smart people - but more importantly they were transparent, authentic, and cared a great deal about their teams.
The more we talked, the more we realized we had similar values in common.
It was through this lens, that it just felt like a great decision for the team.
The next play
This is not an exit. This is the beginning of Saleswhale and 6sense coming together, joining forces to create something really unique. This is a chance to upend the entire sales and marketing technology landscape, and unlock some really enormous opportunities. This is the beginning of the RevTech Revolution.
I want to conclude with something my old rugby coach taught me, “Don’t dwell on the past, don’t linger too long on mistakes, or on celebrating accomplishments. Snap your attention to what you should do next. Focus on the next play.”
It’s a mantra that I’ve carried throughout my life, in good times and bad.
So, here’s to the future. We have lots of work to do, and it’s going to be exciting.
This is our next play.
Onwards.
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FAQ
I'm an existing customer, what happens now?
Rest assured, as a customer, nothing changes now with regards to your service. The Saleswhale team will continue to move forward and keep adding to our product (the upcoming release is something I'm really excited about!). Our priorities will remain the same, and we remain committed to delivering for you.
Please feel free to write to me directly at gabriel [at] saleswhale.com if you have any questions!