Connect The Dots Raises $15M Series A to Eliminate Sales Friction by Harnessing the Power of Relationships at Scale

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Connect The Dots, a network intelligence platform that uses AI to map and manage career-long professional relationships, today announced a $15 million Series A funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Cloud Apps Capital Partners and Velvet Sea Ventures. This brings Connect The Dots' total funding to $20 million, which will be used to scale the company's behavior-based relationship graph of all people and companies.

Connect The Dots analyzes email metadata to deliver users a richly detailed view of users' relationships and contacts. Users can opt in to share their relationships with close contacts, delivering invaluable insights into who knows who and how well they know each other.

"For sales teams, the network intelligence our platform provides is transformative," said Drew Sechrist, founder, and CEO of Connect The Dots. "Sales has become a slog. Instead of playing the cold outreach lottery, they can jump straight to real opportunities founded on strong relationships. This round of funding is going to make 2022 a busy year for us, and we are thrilled to have backing from investors who see our vision and can help us to get there."

Senior executives have access to years' worth of email history containing not just thousands of individual and company contacts, but also a trove of behavioral metadata. The frequency, duration and nature of email exchanges offers rich context for each individual relationship that, until now, has never been tapped.

"As a former senior vice president of Product at Salesforce, I instantly saw how powerful a platform like Connect The Dots could be," said Scott Beechuk, partner at Norwest Venture Partners. "Every company is under pressure to innovate, recruit top talent and sell bigger deals, and all of that is infinitely easier when you can tap into relationships. LinkedIn became one of the most valuable tech companies in the world by digitizing people's professional networks. Connect the Dots goes even further by providing detailed, actionable insight that no other platform can offer."

"Connect The Dots is the missing link in relationship selling that none of the other networks have solved at scale with elegance," said Elay Cohen, CEO of SalesHood, and former senior vice president of Sales Productivity at Salesforce. "There's no other system that is developed with such thoughtfulness and experience around how you manage real-life relationships online. This isn't just another SaaS platform. This is the future of business networking."

Connect The Dots recently surveyed 350 salespeople, who emphasized the value of warm introductions and the challenges of leveraging colleagues' networks. The best deals come from warm connections or their existing network, 58% of respondents said. But 67% said they had lost valuable contacts and had to start from scratch, usually from losing access to email or CRM from their previous job. And 40% reported that it would be very painful to see who their coworkers know that they don't.

To best serve this emerging market and maximize the value of its platform, Connect The Dots will be free forever to individual users, with paid options offering enhanced controls and additional functionality for businesses.

About Connect The Dots
Connect The Dots is the most powerful network intelligence platform for individuals and teams. It provides expansive insight into who really knows who, helping sellers source insight, influence, and warm introductions. Headquartered in San Francisco, Connect The Dots is led by former Salesforce top seller Drew Sechrist and former Salesforce Design Lead Ian Swinson. Investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Cloud Apps Capital Partners and Velvet Sea Ventures. Connect The Dots completed a third-party compliance attestation for SOC 2 (Type II) in December 2021. To learn more, visit ctd.ai.

About Norwest Venture Partners
Norwest is a leading venture and growth equity investment firm managing more than $9.5 billion in capital. Since our inception, we have invested in more than 600 companies and partner with over 150 active companies currently in our venture and growth equity portfolio. The firm invests in early to late-stage companies across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare. We offer a deep network of connections, operating experience and a wide range of impactful services to help CEOs and founders scale their businesses. Norwest has offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, with subsidiaries in India and Israel. For more information, please visit www.nvp.com. Follow Norwest on Twitter @NorwestVP.

About Cloud Apps Capital Partners
Cloud Apps Capital Partners is a market-focused venture capital firm helping early-stage companies in cloud business application markets build the next generation of global, category-leading businesses. The firm currently manages over $140 million, with investments from university endowments, large foundations, and institutional investors. Cloud Apps Capital Partners has more direct industry, operational and investing experience in building global cloud business application companies than any other early-stage venture capital firm.

About Velvet Sea Ventures
Velvet Sea Ventures is a multistage venture firm backed and led by a tight network of investors and entrepreneurs who have built iconic companies. Its principals have more than 100 years of combined experience and more than $2 billion invested as founders and venture investors.  Velvet Sea Ventures provides seed-to-growth stage capital investments coupled with strategic support across all sectors. Current Velvet Sea Ventures portfolio companies include Scopely, eToro, Liquid Death, LeoLabs, Strigo, SuperRare, Elementus, Connect The Dots, Nameless and Mercato.

SOURCE Connect The Dots