Walnut, an Israeli fintech startup, raised $15 million in a Series A round of funding led by Eight Roads Ventures, a global VC managing $8 billion of assets, with portfolio companies such as AppsFlyer, Alibaba, Hibob and Made.com. The round brings Walnut’s total funding to date to $21 million.
Last fall, none other than NFL legend Joe Montana was one of the investors in Walnut’s seed round of which brought in $2.5 million.
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Walnut was founded in early 2020, all the way back in BCV (Before Corona Virus) by co-founders Yoav Vilner and Danni Friedland.
So what does Walnut do? It basically helps companies improve their sales teams’ performances. The company says that it offers a “failure-free, codeless and 100% customizable” platform that empowers every sales rep to “own their successful sales demo experience.”
Walnut aims to make demos, as they are performed today, obsolete. Walnut calls itself the world’s first Sales Experience Platform that, “puts the prospect in the center of the sales engagement, and empowers sales leaders to own the entire process without relying on any back-end team.” Founders Yoav Vilner and Dani Friedland said that they set out to redefine how SaaS companies improve their Go-To-Market with a holistic approach. Vilner explained that they chose to name the company Walnut to express the fact that for companies, “demonstrating the product is the toughest nut to crack.”
The no-code platform enables teams to create customized product demos quickly and efficiently, integrate them into their sales and marketing processes, and generate insights – all functionalities which in-house development, the traditional way of creating demos, often do not provide sufficiently.
Walnut CEO Yoav Vilner said, “It has been an amazing first year for Walnut. We’re honored to have such experienced investors put their trust in us yet again. Our commercial traction and product value have been faster than we could have imagined.”
Davor Hebel and Eyal Rabinovich from Eight Roads Ventures commented: “COVID has accelerated the trend towards remote sales, though the process started long before the pandemic. Most companies lack the automation and digital scalability to deliver the experience buyers seek. Walnut’s platform approach to demos and the overall sales experience significantly help companies address today’s dynamic challenges. We have been very impressed by the rapid growth Walnut has achieved over the last year and we are thrilled to partner with Yoav and the team as it looks to become a category leader”.
Gigi-Levy Weiss, General partner at NFX added “In the last few months since leading Walnut’s seed round, we have seen their no-code demo and remote sales platform skyrocket in demand, including from Fortune 500 companies. It’s the perfect combination of great team and product at exactly the right time in the market. We’re looking forward to their continued growth.””