Business-to-business (B2B) enterprises are increasingly relying on partner ecosystems to generate income. According to a 2018 Accenture poll, 76 percent of company leaders believe existing business models will be unrecognizable in the next five years, with ecosystems playing a key role. Despite their rising relevance, organizations are still depending on spreadsheets and long virtual or in-person meetings to establish relationships. As a result, while profitable, company ecosystems have a high failure rate. According to BCG research, just around 15% of them were long-term viable. This, however, does not have to be the case.
According to Reveal CEO Simon Bouchez, who is working on a platform with Gautier Machelon, Perrine El Khoury, and Alex Sadones to help B2B organizations better discover sales prospects with their partners. Qualtrics, Tealium, Contentsquare, and Vonage are among the company’s clients. Reveal said today that it has secured $50 million in a Series a round headed by Insight Partners and including Eight Roads, Chalfen Ventures, Dig Ventures, LocalGlobe & Latitude, and Ventech. The investment raises the startup’s total funding to $54 million.
“When selling to a partner consumer, organizations produce 2x more value,” Bouchez told TechCrunch via email. “However, most businesses do not understand how to capture this value and do not invest in partnerships.” Partnership leaders are still missing out on a clear revenue seat.” Bouchez was the CEO of Multiposting, an HR digital firm, until it was bought by SAP in 2018, before starting Reveal in 2020. Gautier co-founded personnel sourcing and recruiting portal Work4 with Sadones, who was the CTO of Multiposting. At Work4, Khoury was the director of business development.
Initially, Reveal, which began as Sharework, focused on automated sales account mapping — that is, documenting the individuals who work at a certain target account. However, in 2020, the company expanded its product approach to include marketers looking to generate and convert sales leads. Some may claim that Reveal’s solution fits under the area of ecosystem management, which includes tools for navigating and managing B2B partner networks. However, according to Bouchez, Reveal takes it a step further by integrating sales and marketing teams in the lead generation, sales enablement, and ecosystem growth process.
“We think we’ve invented a new category: a collaborative growth platform that allows businesses to harness their ecosystem to drive growth,” Bouchez added. “An Excel spreadsheet or firms who haven’t yet realized this growth potential would be our closest competitors.” Of course, as our industry matures and draws top investors, we should expect competition, and several firms, such as Partnerstack, Crossbeam, and Workspan, are rapidly expanding.” Reveal uses data from existing CRM systems to find common sales accounts and prospective new leads. Even if a firm isn’t directly related to them, algorithms try to determine the best partners to add to its ecosystem.
