Revolear is a cutting-edge digital deal platform that transforms the way companies conduct business by enabling seamless collaboration between buyers, sellers, and other stakeholders. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Revolear founder and CEO Raja Singh to learn more.
Raja Singh’s Background
Singh has been in the CRM software business for nearly 25 years, first at Siebel Systems, the company that invented the CRM category, and then about 11 years in the Salesforce ecosystem – as a customer, a partner, and most recently as the SVP and general manager of their insurance business.
Formation Of Revolear
How did the idea for the company come together? Singh said:
“In all those years of being a purveyor of sales software and as an approver of deals within companies, I was surprised at how much of the sales and approval processes relied on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the like. Those tools provide the flexibility sellers need to negotiate creative deals, but the knowledge within them is often out of reach from analytics and machine learning. I started Revolear with the vision of making a system just as flexible as those Office platforms but structured enough to fully leverage enterprise AI, analytics and automation.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Singh explained:
“Revolear is a SaaS-based, artificial intelligence-powered digital deal platform that connects buyers and sellers in the cloud, combining the capabilities to structure, propose, negotiate and approve a deal on a shared source of data. At the core of Revolear is its proprietary DealCraft solution modeling technology, which enables the platform to easily adapt to a wide range of industries and commercial structures.”
“While our initial applications focus on selling, we also want to incorporate the buyer’s needs into the solution.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Singh’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Singh shared:
“To date, our focus has been turning the initial vision into working software. Every Thursday morning, the entire company puts their hands on their keyboards to test the current version in a real-world scenario. We call these ‘case trials’. Sometimes, they go great, and it’s very gratifying – but other times we just find all the bugs we need to fix. Either way, case trials have become part of our culture and part of our development process.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges has Singh faced in building the company? Singh acknowledged:
“AI models depend on data to learn, and most of the obstacles in implementing AI still revolve around the data. For machine learning models we create within Revolear on behalf of customers, the obstacle is getting enough data in a format we can work with. For generative AI, we have the benefit of huge pre-trained models, but then you have to manage the security risks of sending your proprietary data as inputs. The good news is that modeling techniques are getting better with smaller data sets, and the Large Language Models are putting security features in place.”
Evolution Of Revolear’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Singh noted:
“Our initial vision for the product focused on deal approvals and pricing analytics. However, as we talked with more and more CEOs at prospective customers, it was clear that our digital proposals – and the ability to observe customer engagement on those proposals – were more attractive than we first thought. Given that there’s less in-person time with customers these days, CEOs were intrigued and excited by the prospect of recreating some of those ‘in the room’ observations with digital and AI technologies. We’ve reprioritized to capitalize on that interest.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Singh highlighted:
“Recently we announced a raise of $6 million in seed funding. This was an exciting moment that helped put us on the map, and we will use these funds to expand our operations and reach.”
Customer Success Stories
Upon asking Singh about customer success stories, he cited:
“Our software will become generally available in the Fall of 2023, and until that time we aren’t sharing the details of our pilot customers. Stay tuned!”
Funding
After asking Singh about funding, he revealed:
“We recently raised $6m in seed financing. Strictly speaking, it’s an angel round, but the angels are the same group that funded Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV) and Vlocity, where I was SVP of Products. They’ve been remarkably successful, and my relationship with them goes back to 25 years to our time at Siebel Systems.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Singh assessed:
“Broadly speaking, we operate in the enterprise sales technology market. Conservatively, it’s $10 billion in annual spending with huge sub-categories like Sales Force Automation (SFA), Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ), and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM). The market is huge and available today, but it also has lots of competitors.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Singh affirmed:
“There are three things that make Revolear unique: First, we focus on being a two-sided platform for both buyers and sellers. Second, we cut across several categories, with a focus on large, complex deals. Third, we tightly integrate all the internal approvals a salesperson needs to navigate, which is a constant pain point. We’re confident that our solution will resonate with enterprise sellers in a very unique way.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Singh concluded:
“Our vision is to be the preferred platform to negotiate a business deal, and we mean preferred by both buyers and sellers. We’re just in the early stages of exploring how AI can help both parties get their questions answered, quickly find their optimal price and terms, and then secure all the approvals – some of which might be automated. We couldn’t be more excited to keep exploring and moving forward.”
