ShiftUp, an innovative company dedicated to transforming the operations of enterprise sales teams through advanced AI-powered sales intelligence, has announced a successful seed funding round, securing $3 million. This funding round attracted the backing of prominent investors, including seasoned investment veteran Phil Reed. The round also includes a diverse group of former venture capitalists, seasoned sales executives, chief financial officers, and chief technology officers from esteemed Fortune 500 companies, all of whom recognize the transformative potential of ShiftUp’s approach.
Founded by Ryan Adamson, a veteran in the tech industry with a track record of co-founding and scaling successful companies, including Cradlepoint—an influential player in the connectivity sector—and another billion-dollar venture, ShiftUp is a brainchild of collaborative efforts with go-to-market specialists Nick Valla (CEO) and Ken Valla (CRO). Together, they embody a visionary perspective on how artificial intelligence should fundamentally enhance and support sales organizations.
The inception of ShiftUp traces back over a decade to a casual conversation between Nick and Ken Valla at a sushi bar in Chicago. During this meeting, they explored a common challenge faced by sales organizations—disparate methodologies and disconnected tools that result in inefficiencies.
The Vallas envisioned a streamlined future where sales professionals could log in seamlessly and receive precise guidance on their tasks, equipped with relevant information delivered through coherent workflows they had been trained on previously.
ShiftUp’s platform transcends mere training or enabling of sales professionals; it actively performs tasks on their behalf. Natively integrated with Salesforce, the platform automates key processes, including account research, opportunity identification, stakeholder mapping, and strategic planning. It synthesizes this information to deliver prioritized, actionable insights directly to the salespeople, effectively enhancing their efficiency and effectiveness.
The timing for ShiftUp’s innovative platform is essential, given the profound disruptions caused by the pandemic within sales organizations. As Ken Valla points out, there has been “an enormous gap in how people sell effectively” that has emerged.
Factors like shift to remote work, high levels of talent turnover, and the erosion of institutional knowledge have left many sales teams struggling to master the fundamental skills required for consultative selling. At the core of the platform’s design is a comprehensive analysis of the behaviors exhibited by top-performing salespeople, covering aspects from territory management to effective opportunity development.
The early customer pipeline for ShiftUp has expanded significantly, with Chief Revenue Officers across various sectors—ranging from technology and telecommunications to life sciences—expressing genuine enthusiasm for the platform’s approach. A standout feature of ShiftUp is its ability to integrate seamlessly with existing technology stacks, enriching and augmenting organizational data without replacing existing systems, thereby enhancing overall operational efficiency.
How the funding will be used: The funding will be strategically deployed to accelerate product development, enhance customer success initiatives, and bolster brand-building efforts, as the founders identify this period as a critical inflection point for the industry.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’re not asking sellers to manage AI agents or configure complex workflows. Our system operates like having the best sales strategist working behind the scenes for every rep, delivering what they need to know, when they need to know it.”
“Don’t start with the shiny object. Start with your go-to-market strategy and the real problems you’re trying to solve. Then ask how technology can enable better, more efficient outcomes.”
“People are getting burned on AI investments left and right. Our job is to prove that AI isn’t a fad—it just hasn’t been orchestrated and connected the right way yet.”
“We’re not building technology for technology’s sake. We’re reimagining how companies think about growth, how they bring value to customers, and how they enable their people to succeed. That’s what drives us—building something that genuinely changes the industry for the better.”
“In ten years, we want people to look back and say ShiftUp was the catalyst that took the entire industry to the next phase of how we drive growth, bring value to customers, and enable our people.”
Nick Valla
“ShiftUp is the product I wish I had at my previous companies. Sales leaders don’t need more dashboards or training programs—they need AI that thinks and operates like their top performers. After building companies worth billions, I can recognize transformational technology when I see it.”
“I’m applying all the lessons learned, contacts, and partnerships built over decades to get ShiftUp off the ground quickly and successfully,” he explains. “The key is measuring real results, not getting caught up in AI buzzwords and hype.”
“Even without AI, there’s a massive problem companies are grappling with—their salespeople have lost fundamental selling capabilities,” notes Ken Valla. “ShiftUp solves this by enabling sellers with data and proven approaches, transforming their role entirely. Instead of spending months training them on methodology, we make them productive from week one.”
Ryan Adamson, Co-Founder and COO
“AI will continue redefining not just the salesperson’s role, but the entire go-to-market organization. Companies will keep iterating on what they can leverage AI to do versus what requires human involvement.”
“Many companies simply take existing tools and layer AI on top, akin to upgrading from a hand whisk to an electric mixer. However, we are redefining the entire cooking process. We are not only automating individual tasks; we are transforming how the entire meal is prepared, served, and ultimately delivered to our customers.”
“Salespeople were being trained on various methodologies and using tools that didn’t integrate smoothly, while Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) were consistently urging teams to ‘work in the CRM.'”
Ken Valla, Co-Founder and CRO
