Demoing Value with Saleo

The trend of hyper-personalization is no longer solely associated with the consumer world; it’s now becoming the new standard in B2B. Just as consumers have come to expect tailored recommendations, seamless user experiences, and content that aligns precisely with their preferences, B2B buyers have also grown accustomed to personalized engagement. But one field that has yet to nail this trend is the world of sales demos. Until now. 

Enter our newest investment Saleo, the first and only live demo experience platform. Today, we’re happy to share that Emergence has led their $13M Series A round. 

Saleo takes on a lackluster and costly status quo with the first-ever AI-enabled solution for creating vivid, live product demos. Software sales demos are often the first time buyers have the opportunity to visualize how their teams will use a product, but up until now, this process had a lot of friction on both the pre-sales and prospect sides. Setting up demos was a very time-intensive process for pre-sales professionals (who often need to rope in their data science team, designers, and developers for hours of work), and there was no way to render live data within a product, resulting in a subpar experience for both salespeople and prospective customers. Data would break, nothing would update live, and prospects had a hard time truly visualizing the value of the solution they were evaluating. Bad demos cost deals.

Saleo addresses a critical void in the market. It enables companies to showcase their actual, native products with live, dynamic, and realistic data that automatically populates and changes in real time. While competitors offer static image solutions with dummy data, Saleo leverages its proprietary data model to empower sales teams to demonstrate the true dynamic nature of their products. It’s not just about showcasing; it’s about immersing potential customers in a live experience. 

Saleo combines AI’s computational power with human expertise to revolutionize the software buying process, making it vastly more simple and efficient for buyers and sellers. The impact is clear: sales teams that use Saleo have experienced 50% shorter sales cycles, 2x increase in pre-sales NPS, and a 74% increase in win rate. These are ROI numbers we seldom see with even the best sales tech.

Anyone who has worked in software sales or who has bought business software has experienced this pain. Chief among them are Saleo co-founders Justin McDonald, Daniel Hellerman, and Alexey Svetliakov. Long-time veterans of the sales and marketing technology SaaS world, this team’s combined vision and expertise form a partnership that embodies the essence of Emergence’s “Focus to Drive Conviction” value—a principle we aim to embody and seek out in our founders. We rarely see such a founder-problem fit as we do in Saleo.

In Saleo, we see a catalyst for change in the pre-sales landscape. We look forward to partnering with Saleo on their journey to create better demo experiences, ultimately benefiting businesses and customers alike.