Own Pain Startups

Pleo is a SaaS platform that automates expense reports and simplifies company expenses. Founded by Jeppe Rindom, who previously served as CFO at Tradeshift and CEO at Nodes, the company has raised over $78M in funding from top European and US investors including Creandum, Vaestfonden, and Stripes Group. Pleo focuses on serving SMBs from day one and emphasizes building a strong company culture alongside product excellence.

Zylo is a cloud-based software management system founded by Eric Christopher, a seasoned enterprise sales executive. The company has raised over $12M from top-tier investors including Bessemer, Salesforce, and GGV. Eric leveraged his experience from leadership roles at Sprout Social, Shoutlet, and ExactTarget to build and scale Zylo's sales-driven growth strategy.

InCountry is a SaaS platform that enables companies to operate globally while maintaining data residency compliance. Founded by Peter Yared, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded and sold six enterprise software companies, InCountry has raised $8M from investors including Bloomberg Beta, Felicis, and CRV. The company focuses on solving the complex enterprise problem of storing mission-critical data in its country of origin without extensive compliance overhead.

GoNimbly is a SaaS consultancy specializing in revenue operations, founded by Jason Reichl to help companies break down silos between go-to-market teams and align around revenue as the north star metric. Growing 100% year over year, the company has worked with enterprise clients like Zendesk, Twilio, PagerDuty, and Coursera to increase revenue by 26% through strategic revenue ops alignment.

Troops.ai is a Slack-based sales collaboration platform built by Dan Reich, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded Spinback (acquired by Salesforce). The company has raised over $17M in VC funding from investors including Felicis Ventures, Founder Collective, First Round, Nextview, Susa Ventures, and Slack itself. Troops helps sales teams transition from individual performance tracking to account-based collaboration, enabling teams to work in unison and reduce organizational silos.

Scalyr is a log monitoring and analysis platform for DevOps teams founded by serial entrepreneur Steve Newman, who previously created Writely (acquired by Google to become Google Docs). The company has raised over $27.5M in funding from notable investors including Susa Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Shasta, and GV, establishing itself as a key player in the DevOps tooling space.

Dialpad is a modern business phone system founded by Craig Walker, an experienced operator with a track record of building voice communication products at Google. The company has raised over $120M from top-tier VCs including Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and Iconiq. Craig's expertise in go-to-market strategy, enterprise sales trials, and scaling teams has been central to Dialpad's positioning as a SaaS solution for modern workplaces.

Gremlin is a 'failure as a service' SaaS platform founded by Kolton Andrus, a former Chaos Engineer at Netflix who designed Netflix's failure injection service. The company has raised over $8M in VC funding from top-tier investors including Index Ventures and Amplify Partners. Kolton leverages his deep experience scaling reliability at Amazon and Netflix to help organizations proactively identify system weaknesses.

SalesCollider is a sales advisory service founded by Ryan Williams, a veteran sales leader who scaled teams at AdRoll (growing ARR from $4M to $58M), advised InVision on enterprise deals, and grew enterprise sales by 400%+ at LeadGenius. The company helps technical founders navigate early-stage sales challenges and build effective sales functions.

FreshBooks is a cloud-based accounting SaaS platform built by Mike McDerment that grew from his parent's basement to serve over 10 million users worldwide. The company has raised over $75M in VC funding from investors like Accomplice and Georgian Partners, establishing itself as the #1 cloud accounting solution for service-based small businesses.

MuleSoft is an enterprise integration platform founded by Ross Mason that connects applications, data, and devices. After raising over $250M in VC funding from top-tier investors like Lightspeed, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and NEA, MuleSoft went public in March 2017 with a 45% pop on its first trading day.

Clari is a SaaS platform founded by Andy Byrne that helps sales teams improve forecast accuracy and drive revenue through better deal execution and predictive analysis. The company has raised over $30M in venture funding from top-tier investors including Sequoia and Bain Capital Ventures. Andy's prior founding experience—including growing Clearwell Systems from pre-product to $100M run rate before its Symantec acquisition—informed his approach to building Clari as an enterprise sales solution.

Influitive, founded by Mark Organ (former founding CEO of Eloqua, which sold to Oracle for $810M), helps B2B companies mobilize customer advocates for revenue growth. The company has raised close to $50M in VC funding from top-tier investors including Lightspeed and First Round Capital, reflecting strong traction in the advocate marketing space.

Lessonly is a modern learning software platform founded by Max Yoder that helps teams accelerate productivity by converting work knowledge into lessons. The company has raised funding from notable investors including Tim Kopp (former ExactTarget CMO), OpenView Ventures, and Jay Baer (New York Times Bestseller), and operates successfully outside Silicon Valley from Indianapolis.

Automile is a fleet and asset management SaaS platform founded by serial entrepreneur Jens Nylander, who previously created Sweden's largest music player and founded Jays headphones (NASDAQ-listed). The company has secured backing from prominent investors including Jason Lemkin, Point Nine, Justin Kan, and Dawn Capital. Jens is building a repeatable, scalable sales process focused on the SMB market with emphasis on technology-minded sales teams and optimized onboarding.

Rocketrip is a SaaS platform founded by Daniel Ruch that helps companies reduce travel spend by incentivizing employees to save on business travel. The company has secured backing from top-tier investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, and Y Combinator. Daniel brings significant experience from his previous roles at Tremor Video and TACODA (acquired by AOL).

BrightFunnel is a SaaS platform founded by Nadim Hossain that helps marketers quantify their true impact on revenue. Backed by investors including Matt Garratt at Salesforce Ventures, Tim Kopp, and James Cham at Bloomberg Beta, the company addresses a core pain point in B2B marketing: the disconnect between marketing activities and measurable business outcomes.

Heap is an analytics infrastructure platform founded by Matin Movasatte, a former product manager at Facebook, that automates user analytics. The company has raised funding from prominent investors including Pejman Nozad, Initialized Capital, and Redpoint, leveraging Matin's experience from Facebook and Google to build a best-in-class analytics product.

Zuora is a SaaS platform at the forefront of subscription business models, founded by Tien Tzuo, an early Salesforce employee (number 11) who served as CMO and Chief Strategy Officer. The company has raised funding from top-tier investors including Benchmark, Sequoia, Redpoint, and Marc Benioff, positioning itself as one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies.

John Barrows is a sales training expert and consultant who has built a reputation as 'the Godfather of Sales' by working with major SaaS companies including Dropbox, Box, Marketo, and Twilio. He provides sales optimization training, strategies, and consulting services to help VPs of Sales and sales reps improve their performance. His traction comes primarily through his blog, speaking engagements, and reputation-based word-of-mouth from high-profile SaaS clients.