Luster is a company enabling the world’s top sales teams with Predictive Enablement technology. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Luster co-founder and CEO Christina Brady to learn more about the company.
Christina Brady’s Background
What is Christina Brady’s background? Brady said:
“When it comes to full-cycle sales experience, I’ve worked in the industry for nearly two decades, one of which was served within executive leadership. Before becoming the CEO and Co-Founder of Luster, I served as the Chief Strategy Officer at Sales Assembly, Head of Sales Growth at Glassdoor, and Head of Revenue at Groupon, among other roles. Throughout my career, I’ve had the privilege to coach over 10,000 sales professionals, whether it be business development representatives or senior leaders, and have been named a two-time Demandbase ‘Top 100 Revenue Leader’ and named Top Sales Executive in B2B SaaS from Nasdaq Tower.
“Outside of my day job, I really enjoy motivational and educational speaking and am closely involved with organizations such as the Revenue Enablement Society, Sales Enablement Collective, Women in Sales, and more, and have spoken at over 50 Sales Kick Off meetings. I also created and am the host of “Taking the Lead,” a podcast for B2B Tech professionals.”
Formation Of Luster
How did the idea for the company come together? Brady shared:
“As a 17-year sales veteran, from full cycle account executive to chief strategy officer, one of the nagging issues I experienced was the inability to understand skill gaps and where they were about to impact our buyers and customers. Training is challenging enough, so ensuring that the training ‘sticks’ and actually works was, previous to Luster, impossible.”
“Practice at work was painful, expensive, awkward, and unscalable. We wanted to change that.”
“Luster is the first AI-powered Predictive Enablement™ technology, using proprietary generative AI to revolutionize sales practice and SaaS sales learning. We’re the first technology to deliver hyper-realistic practice simulations, skill drills and data-driven insights to sales reps that address individual sales gaps before they impact sales outcomes. Luster not only predicts and closes individual skill gaps, enabling sales teams to sell better and faster, but it also provides quantifiable ROI for sales leaders to measure the impact of their training.”
“Luster is backed by VC firm High Alpha. Our Co-Founder and Head of Business Operations & Customer Success, Wes Craig, had the initial spark for the idea of Luster, utilizing AI for sales reps to practice, and they brought me in as the go-to-market and leadership expert to fully bake and bring the idea to life as the CEO.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Brady reflected:
“My favorite memory so far was the day we did our first live demo for a large and notable customer. The technology was smooth, the room was impressed, and we realized that we had something incredibly effective, unique, and unbelievably valuable for sales teams. Months of work led up to that moment, and live demos are always risky! The risk paid off exponentially.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Brady explained:
“Luster has three key features: personalized AI-simulated practice environments, skill drills, and rep & team-level insights. We are also developing and creating a new category of learning; Predictive Enablement. Through our advanced AI, we’re able to create hyper-realistic practice scenarios for each sales stage in a safe, engaging and fun environment to boost sellers’ confidence and enable sales teams to sell better and faster.”
“We also provide skill drill sessions for sales reps to rapidly hone skills like objection handling, value proposition delivery, and discovery within specific personas, which are on-demand with immediate feedback. And lastly, we uncover skill proficiencies and deficiencies in real-time as they evolve which gives sales and enablement leaders visibility and proficiency of their teams. This allows leaders to more efficiently and effectively target coaching and enablement strategies, as well as measure enablement ROI. Our predictive technology can accurately identify skill gaps and proactively address them before they impact the customer. To date, Luster users have reported significant improvements in performance, including 2x higher conversion rates on closed-won deals, 50% faster ramp time and 32% higher average contract value (ACV) than peers not using the platform.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Brady and the team faced in building the company? Brady acknowledged:
“The AI and SaaS tech spaces, respectively, are challenging because of the pace of change and highly competitive environment. Staying up to date on the newest advances in technology, ensuring it’s safe and secure, and assuring that the technology is not only functional but also highly effective is a daily exercise. Many people don’t trust AI because there’s a lot of fear and ambiguity around it. Making this technology digestible and approachable is quite a craft!”
Evolution Of Luster’s Technology
“We started with the idea of simple role-play scenarios for junior salespeople. And since then, it has transitioned to a full platform approach with multiple ways to practice that are applicable to any customer-facing role and tenure of that employee. We quickly realized that a practice platform was nice, but the data and analytics you can derive from the environment are far more valuable. We’ve also improved the quality of the simulations and practice sessions and have made several advancements in the realism of the voices and personalities, the latency and the coaching and feedback correlated with it.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Brady cited:
“In the last seven months, it feels like everything has been an incredible milestone! From incorporating and founding the business in January 2024 to kicking off the product build in February to launching the demo in April and the full product in June, it’s been an incredible and fast ride. Signed contracts for more than five paid customers were also cause to celebrate! To be revenue positive within the first six months was validating and helped us quickly identify product market fit.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Brady about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“We had two different customers try Luster initially for less than two weeks, and they very quickly requested a full enterprise rollout. They were both amazed at how specific the simulation was to their product, process and methodology and how easy to use the tool was. Sales reps, once finding out that their peers had access to Luster, started requesting it!”
Funding
When asking Brady about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“We have received a pre-seed round of funding, led by High Alpha, and we have over $70K in ARR to date with new customers signing on daily!”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Brady assessed:
“Our TAM is extraordinary. We are focused on sales and customer-facing go-to-market teams. Ideally, organizations who embrace training and coaching and are looking to ensure that their efforts in learning and development are measurable and tied to their KPIs and Metrics. This puts our TAM well above 10,000 companies, with over $20B in whitespace in the SaaS industry alone.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Brady affirmed:
“We’re creating a completely new category of sales enablement with the first AI-powered Predictive Enablement technology. Through our Predictive Enablement™ technology, we’re able to predict and address individual skill gaps before they impact sales outcomes. Simply building an AI bot to interact with salespeople isn’t enough.”
“Luster not only identifies and closes individual skill gaps, enabling sales teams to sell better and faster, but it also provides quantifiable ROI for sales leaders to measure the impact of their training.”
“We also want to be a hero to sales enablement teams, and no other company is specifically focused on this department. Since 2020, the number one role in tech that has been laid off has been sales enablement because they’re not seen as a ‘revenue center’ but rather a ‘cost center.’ Sales enablement leaders rarely have hard, non-subjective data to show the value of their work and the efficacy of their training programs. As champions of sales enablement, Luster provides sales leaders the data they need to expose enablement ROI for the first time.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Brady concluded:
“We aim to make Predictive Enablement a household term and change the ways that organizations train, scale, hire and enable their teams. We hope to surpass $1 million in ARR in 2025, and grow at last 50% YoY from that point forward. We also aim to build a culture and value first organization, and create a company that’s fulfilling and positive for all employees.”
