Koala, the rep-first GTM engine that turns your best sales signals into plays, announced the closing of its $15 million Series A funding round, bringing total funding to $20 million, including an earlier seed round. The round was led by CRV, with participation from HubSpot Ventures, Recall Capital, and Afore.
The funding will fuel Koala’s mission to transform how go-to-market (GTM) teams build pipelines by reducing inefficiencies, bridging departmental gaps, and empowering sales development representatives (SDRs) with smarter tools and support.
Founded by former Segment executives Tido Carriero, Netto Farah, and Matthew Shwery, Koala is tackling a longstanding problem in the B2B sales process. And what Koala does is solve the fragmented and inefficient pipeline generation process that often leaves SDRs, the backbone of growth in GTM strategies, struggling to piece together tools and data.
Koala also aims to address the fundamental issues in pipeline generation that hinder efficiency and growth. And up until 2021, we lived in a world where enough outbound volume solved almost all problems. However, the world has fundamentally changed, and companies are completely rethinking their GTM engines:
1.) Spam Overload – Ideal prospects are inundated with irrelevant outreach, eroding trust and engagement.
2.) Marketing -> Sales Handoff – Companies have trouble modulating the right set of in-ICP leads, with full context on where the lead is in their journey.
3.) Leaky Funnels – If sales teams can’t anticipate buyer needs and deliver value quickly, they’ll fail to hold attention in increasingly crowded markets.
Even though Koala utilizes AI to optimize the SDR workflow, the company emphasizes its commitment to keeping humans at the center of B2B sales.
Some of the early adopters of Koala include Vercel and Tailscale (which are also CRV backed businesses) as well as Sanity.io, Segment and Float, DX.
This seed funding will enable Koala to invest in advanced AI capabilities, expand its suite of product modules, and establish a global support foundation to serve its growing customer base better.
KEY QUOTES:
“From our collective experience, we have long felt like the amazing data we were gathering wasn’t having the outsized impact it could for B2B companies. When we started Koala, we interviewed countless GTM professionals and kept hearing about one critical pain point: SDRs, often fresh out of college, were responsible for a company’s growth yet forced to navigate a bloated and disconnected tool stack, so we built a solution that addresses this painful process.”
“We’re adamantly anti-AI SDR. AI SDRs have overpromised and underdelivered, failing to master the art of finding the right buyer at the right time. At Koala, we believe humans buy from humans, and we’re focused on dramatically decreasing the time it takes to connect with the right audience without replacing the human element.”
– Tido Carriero, co-founder and CEO of Koala
“Koala is such an important piece of our GTM strategy–we use it for automated outbound, creating target accounts lists, running account personalization experiments, measuring our content creation, and informing our campaign strategies. Also, working with the Koala team has been so collaborative since day one–they feel like an extension of our own team.”
– Morgane Palomares, VP of Marketing, Vercel
“We’re thrilled to back the Koala team as they redefine pipeline generation for GTM teams. Tido, Netto and Matthew bring unmatched expertise and a clear vision for solving one of the most critical challenges in B2B sales. Koala’s approach balances innovation with practicality, delivering real value to sales and marketing teams by making the SDR role more impactful and efficient.”
– Reid Christian, general partner at CRV
