Sybill, a startup focused on creating an AI assistant for sales representatives, announced on Wednesday that it has secured $11 million in a Series A funding round led by Greycroft.
The market for AI sales assistants is becoming increasingly competitive as companies utilize generative AI and large language models to help salespeople automate tasks such as filling out requests for proposals and updating internal databases.
What distinguishes Sybill’s assistant is its capability to track and analyze numerous call transcripts and emails, providing context-driven insights and summaries rather than just meeting notes and transcripts from one or two calls. The startup is also focusing on salespeople rather than sales leadership to expand its customer base, a strategy that has facilitated rapid market penetration.
“If the AI output is not accurate, people lose trust in the system very, very quickly,” said Gorish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of Sybill, in an interview.
Sybill has developed an in-house retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline on top of existing generative AI GPT models to deliver sales-specific results. The startup analyzes calls, emails, and messages between buyers and sellers using its RAG models to consider additional signals while delivering output. This deal-level analysis helps reduce inaccuracies in predictions, according to Aggarwal.
Sybill’s AI aims to handle the majority of repetitive, manual tasks involved in sales calls. It records sales conversations, provides a summary of the call, drafts follow-up emails based on the salesperson’s writing style, and offers context about the call. It can also update fields in CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot, automatically summarize the budget, buyer, competition, buying process, and other relevant information (using frameworks like BANT, MEDDICC, and SPICED), and make all that information available to sales leadership.
Sybill competes with sales-specific tools like Gong and Chorus.ai, as well as transcription tools like Otter, Fireflies, Fathom, and Zoom.
Aggarwal believes there’s a key factor that differentiates his startup: “These are designed as tools, not as an assistant, which is our approach,” he explained. “An assistant is someone you delegate entire tasks to, unlike a tool that processes some data and provides insights. We also create end-to-end workflows to address use cases like call notetaking, CRM entry, and follow-ups.”
Aggarwal shared with TechCrunch that he met his co-founder, Nishit Asnani, at Stanford University’s graduate school. A year later, they were joined by Soumyarka Mondal, the co-founder and CTO of Sybill, who previously worked at Confluent, Morgan Stanley, and Salesforce; and Mehak Aggarwal, Gorish’s sister, who had been a research fellow and led AI development at Harvard University and MIT.
Word-of-mouth works
Founded in 2020, Sybill rapidly increased its ARR from $100,000 to $1 million within just 9 months in 2023, largely driven by referrals, according to Aggarwal. He mentioned that around 60% to 70% of new customers and revenue come from direct referrals or users who bring Sybill to their new companies after changing jobs.
The startup has already acquired over 500 paying customers (teams), with clients spanning more than 30 countries, primarily in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and India.
Aggarwal noted that the tech slowdown actually benefited the startup, as companies sought to cut costs and enhance efficiency.
“Sybill helps sellers save over 5 hours each week, provides management with true visibility into operations, and boosts sales process efficiency,” he said.
The Series A funding round brings Sybill’s total raised to $14.5 million since its founding in 2020. Existing investors Neotribe Ventures, Powerhouse Ventures, and Uncorrelated Ventures also participated in this round. The startup did not disclose its valuation.
The new funds will be used to further develop its AI assistant and hire additional staff. Sybill currently has 30 employees and plans to expand to about 40 by the end of the year.