Investing in GetAccept, the software tool for digital sales
Earlier in December 2020, GetAccept announced in the press that the company raised a $20m series B led by US investor Bessemer Venture Partners. We are thrilled to invest alongside Bessemer and join forces with existing investors DN Capital and Y Combinator to support GetAccept’s amazing team. GetAccept’s total fundraising amount now exceeds $30m.
What’s GetAccept’s mission and why did we partner with the team?
GetAccept is a US-based software company founded by four Swedish entrepreneurs. The startup has developed an all-in-one sales engagement platform helping sales representatives deliver the best buyer experience when sending contracts. The company was founded in 2015 by a team of passionate entrepreneurs motivated by the idea of making digital sales more efficient and more personalized for everyone involved, from sales representatives to prospects and new clients.
Like any other process or industry, the digitalization of the sales process is evolving and sales representatives have experienced it firsthand, most notably since the pandemic is forcing every commercial negotiation to move online. The pain GetAccept is solving is simple: 60% of all contracts are lost to indecision or simply go unanswered. That’s a lot of lost money in a time where B2B sales complexity has never been higher. Sales representatives struggle to build relationships online, in the meantime, a better engagement with prospects is crucial to winning deals when people are more and more flooded with information and emails. Moreover, what’s striking is how little time (36%) salespeople actually spend selling, not because of idleness, but rather because of tedious reporting, contracting time, and chasing clients for paperwork or signatures.
Enters GetAccept: the best friend, the companion, the digital toolbox of any modern sales representative. With GetAccept, the salesforce is killing its target numbers. Thousands of clients are not only seeing their topline growing but also their bottom line as GetAccept is an alternative to the whole fragmented sales toolkit. Needless to say, client retention and feedback are amazing because GetAccept plays at the very end of the sales process, where any incremental efficiency lever makes a difference from a lost deal to fresh money in the bank account.
What’s great with GetAccept is that it delivers a clear ROI on sales team productivity (an increase of win-rates and reduction of time to closing). What’s even better is that they humanize the whole sales process enabling salespeople to focus on what matters most: the human connection with their clients and a seamless sales process. GetAccept is eliminating all the hassle in between from CRM logging to signature collection. The product is built to give superpowers to the sales in the form of sales proposal generation, engagement tracking, live chat communication, sales video engagement, CRM integrations, electronic signature, and much more.
We have known the company for a long time and felt the benefit of their product first hand like Morgan in our team at his former company Wing, but also through Welcome To The Jungle who is a happy GetAccept customer.
Announcing our first investment in the Nordics in a company aligned with our values
We are pursuing our mission to build a great European portfolio as Malmö, Sweden is home to GetAccept, coupled with San Francisco, California. The company is already very international with important operations and footprint in the US, also with offices in the UK, France, Norway and Denmark to serve a global client base in more than 40 countries.
We did not make it to the Nordics to brag, but rather more to find a way to learn from the best practices over there. It’s true to say Nordic companies have something special when it comes to employee engagement and work-life balance. Just like we are learning so much from Welcome To The Jungle on this aspect, GetAccept is well-advanced on the subject. The company has a very international team of more than 100 people across several offices, you can take a look at the “The Humans of GetAccept” page to learn more about them. Besides, the team is ready to tackle environmental issues and we are here to help. Just like Aircall, GetAccept is giving a chance for salespeople to work remotely with a modern technology stack and a more flexible lifestyle.
Speaking about the lead investor in the company, Bessemer Ventures Partners, it’s a real pleasure to be part of a common journey together. Bessemer is one of the oldest venture capital firms with roots dating back to 1911 and most amazingly a continuous success to date in investing in hundreds of amazing technology companies. In the software industry, Bessemer is an early investor in DocuSign, Shopify, or Twilio to name a few. In Europe, they backed Pipedrive which is a CRM company having reached unicorn status recently. The equity story of GetAccept has never been stronger! We think we can well complement the Bessemer team to work together.
Some lessons learned along the way to “GetAccept-ed” and partner with this very special team
- Step into the ring to invest in the best European companies
In a previous Gaia Weekly post named “Client-Centricity in a Commoditized World of Financial Products” we related how challenging it has been to “GetAccept-ed” by this team which grilled us during our escape trip to Malmö last September. Below is a rewind of our thoughts:
“Overlooking entrepreneurs or relying too much on the brand you built to attract them, rather than on your work or on the value-add you can offer, is not beneficial either.
To better illustrate the necessity of client obsession for investors, we experimented it first-hand this week when visiting entrepreneurs in Sweden. You may think that investors act as crown makers because of the power of money, and it is true that sometimes we are overconfident. Yet, this Swedish escapade reminded us of the humbling exercise of selling ourselves, like any entrepreneur would do, to better cater to the needs of our clients, which are the entrepreneurs. We know every great European company is picky about the investors they are willing to deal with, and we accepted to be on the grill to show we can be great partners. We explained thoroughly who we are, what we are doing, what we have done, and what is our value-add and vision for the companies we finance.
Leaving the meeting room, like a ring is an exciting feeling. Moreover, we see this investor’s pitch to founders as a useful sanity check for us because there is no better way to progress than being deeply challenged.”
In hindsight, a sales pitch from investors to the GetAccept’s team was what you could expect from a company giving superpowers to salespeople, led by incredible salespeople.
2. No is not an answer, fight until the end
There were many investors in the starting blocks, only two new have crossed the line. Maybe our ongoing LP fundraising experience is giving us a tougher skin than others. Be nice, show you are working hard and that you could bring value to the table. When Samir told us Bessemer was leading the round instead of us as we initially planned, we were disappointed but our spirit was undaunted and we made our way to the capitalization table. Maybe we clicked together with GetAccept on this premise, we both moved mountains to get things done from scratch.
3. In the end, affectio societatis wins
The picture would not be its fullest without a special thanks to the GetAccept team. It’s filled with incredible individuals showing the highest level of energy and enthusiasm ever. Who told you that B2B SaaS has to be boring? Our first meeting with CEO Samir was memorable because he used the GetAccept product to share his pitch deck with a high-energy opening video. Being passionate is a way of life, there’s nothing too crazy for this team strolling the streets of San Francisco with multicolor suits. Back in their YCombinator’s days, they launched the Inside Silicon Valley vlog which is a good way to get to know them as founders. They distilled through amazing videos numerous advice on what it is like to go through YC and build a startup as well as memorable growth hacks and life moments.
GetAccept is born to be the star of the show and they proved us right once again. Rarely has a company taken that much light in our CRM dealflow where we record the startup we are assessing and the next steps to do a deal together. Investing in GetAccept has been a 5-month long rollercoaster ride. During that time, all our dealflow meetings would start with: “First of all, some news about GetAccept’’. Now that we are part of the picture and proud investors in the company, we feel the taste of victory to switch from an idea in our CRM to material reality.
We are thankful to the GetAccept team for letting us squeeze in. We are also excited to start working together and roll our sleeves to support the company in its next phase of growth.
Hadrien Comte
