A new Seattle startup led by the co-founders of sales software giant Outreach is using AI to automate initial customer interactions and provide personalized product demos for B2B companies.
Gordon Hempton and Wes Hather are the co-founders of FullContext, which came out of stealth mode today to unveil its “buyer copilot” tool designed to boost efficiency for software sales teams.
Companies can use FullContext to engage potential buyers and run demos, straight from their websites and outbound email campaigns.
The idea is to shorten deal cycles and pull insights from conversations with the bot to help advise companies on what buyers are looking for. It’s also building off some research showing that B2B buyers don’t actually like working with sales representatives.
“Talking to an AI instead of a human is a win-win proposition for both sides: buyers don’t have the close pressure and scheduling friction that comes with talking to a human, and sales and marketing teams can automate more of the buying process and generate more pipeline,” Hempton told GeekWire.
FullContext is one of many companies and tools taking advantage of the latest advances in AI to shake up the B2B sales process. The role of humans in the sales process “is going to dramatically change over the next decade,” Hempton said.
The startup faces stiff competition in the B2B software automation sector, but Hempton said none are using AI to demo products and control content.
Hempton and Hather helped launch Outreach a decade ago with Andrew Kinzer and Manny Medina. The company, which also focuses on helping sales teams be more productive, reached unicorn status in 2019. It went through several rounds of layoffs in recent years, but remains atop the GeekWire 200 list of top privately held Pacific Northwest tech companies.
Hempton left Outreach in 2019; Hather departed a year later. They teamed up again on a Seattle startup called Spot, which built software to help companies create a virtual representation of an office.
Spot is still in operation and experiencing “some growth,” Hempton said, but the focus is primarily on FullContext now.
Before their Outreach days, Hempton and Hather helped start a Y Combinator graduate called Team Apart that built a real-time web collaboration tool for remote teams.
FullContext has six employees. The company did not comment on whether it has raised investment.
