Proximate.io

Ross Andrews, 26, had a vision: make predictive sales intelligence as simple and accessible as Netflix. He noticed a significant gap in how salespeople and sales organizations could leverage data to predict outcomes. His co-founder Thomas Bowles, working as a Salesforce administrator at a B2B company, had seen firsthand the shortcomings in existing CRM and sales cloud environments. Together, they decided to build a solution that would democratize sales intelligence for everyone from solo entrepreneurs to large enterprises with dispersed sales teams.

Proximate is an enterprise SaaS sales intelligence platform designed to make predictive sales analytics simple and headache-free. Users sync their company's CRM and the platform handles the rest. The team set a pricing model of $200/month per license, with annual subscriptions discounted at $2,000/year (two months free). Ross's technical co-founder spent seven months coding to get the platform to beta phase. The founding team of four—Ross handling sales, marketing, and business ops; his co-founder on technical development; a chief data scientist handling AI programming; and another team member brought on through networking—began as a distributed team across Boston, Florida, and Ohio. All four founders own equity, with Ross and his co-founder holding over 90% combined, and the other two splitting the remaining stake. Rather than taking salaries, the team maintained full-time or part-time side jobs to keep expenses down while bootstrapping the startup.

The team is currently in the initial beta phase with select beta partners testing the platform for one to two months. They're pre-revenue, with all beta users accessing the platform for free while the team focuses on bug fixes and gathering user feedback. Ross is planning to launch a more aggressive customer acquisition strategy, including sponsoring a startup showcase in the Boston area in September to spread the word about Proximate.

Ross's key to recruiting his team was demonstrating genuine passion for the problem and proving he'd done the homework. He shared all research and market analysis with potential co-founders. For Thomas Bowles, having firsthand experience with CRM pain points made him immediately see the market gap. The equity approach—giving all four founders and advisors a stake in the boat—created alignment and ownership. Ross also hired advisors with relevant expertise in B2B entrepreneurship and AI research, believing in surrounding himself with people smarter than him. His willingness to listen and learn, combined with transparent communication about the opportunity, convinced talented people to commit nights and weekends to an unpaid role.

Proximate is targeting a full launch in fall/early winter, after completing beta testing. The team is planning to raise a $500,000 seed round at a 12.5% stake ($3.5M pre-money valuation, $4M post-money), which would provide a 12-month runway to onboard customers and generate revenue. Their goal is to land 500 licenses in the first 12 months post-launch. The $40,000/month seed budget covers salaries to bring all four founders on full-time plus marketing, sales, and travel expenses for events and outreach.