Highspot, new GeekWire 200 leader, taps AI to boost sales teams – GeekWire

Highspot CEO Robert Wahbe believes AI will accelerate the value proposition for some sales tech companies and dilute the value proposition for others. And he’s confident that his company falls into the former category.

After going through multiple rounds of layoffs in 2023, Highspot is now hiring again and seeing double-digit year-over-year revenue growth.

The company, which sells enterprise software to help make salespeople more efficient, recently ranked No. 1 in the latest update to the GeekWire 200, our list of privately held technology companies in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

Highspot last month unveiled its “AI roadmap,” highlighting new products including “Highspot Copilot Actions” that recommend actions to users, and “Copilot Agents” that complete tasks autonomously.

The ongoing AI boom is changing the sales technology sector. A number of newer “AI sales rep” startups are gaining traction, while larger incumbents are rolling their own AI tools.

Wahbe, a former Microsoft leader who co-founded Highspot in 2011, said Highspot has an edge in regard to the AI race.

“The best AI has the best data — and we have this pretty interesting dataset,” he said.

Highspot has spent more than a decade collecting insights on the sales strategies used by its customer base, which includes NVIDIA, Siemens, FedEx, HSBC, and others.

The Seattle startup uses that data to fuel a proprietary “knowledge graph” that drives recommendations for customers — both based on their own internal performance, and within the broader Highspot ecosystem.

“We know what content they’re needing and using,” Wahbe said. “We know if that content is performing with customers. We know what plays are happening. We know all the training, the practices they’re doing. We understand the meetings and the emails.”

Wahbe said AI can replace transactional and routine sales roles. But humans still need to be in the picture for the foreseeable future, particularly for larger-scale deals, he said.

“They’re going to be empowered by AI,” he said. “They’re going to be helped by AI.”

Highspot co-founder and chief solution architect Oliver Sharp sees AI having a big impact on the company’s coaching products.

Sales leaders can use AI to quickly assess recorded sales calls, correlate those calls to outcomes, and provide feedback to salespeople.

“You can’t listen to 32 hours of calls — but AI can listen to 32 hours of calls,” Sharp noted.

As it develops its own AI tools and models, Highspot has also inked recent partnerships with companies such as Salesforce and Microsoft that are building their own AI enterprise tools.

“We are an absolute compliment to the work that Salesforce and Microsoft are doing,” Wahbe said.

Highspot raised $250 million in 2022 at a $3.5 billion valuation. But like many later-stage startups that raised huge swaths of venture capital when interest rates were low, Highspot went through layoffs twice in 2023 amid a larger tech slowdown.

That forced the company to take a step back and strengthen its cost structure, Wahbe said. And now it’s eyeing a potential public offering,

“Now we are completely sustainable,” he said. “We don’t need any more funding to get to the next level, to get to an IPO.”

Highspot now employs about 800 people and has offices in seven locations worldwide, including a growing operation in India.

Its total funding to date is $650 million. Highspot backers include B Capital Group; D1 Capital Partners; ICONIQ Growth; Madrona Venture Group; Salesforce Ventures; Sapphire Ventures; and Tiger Global Management.

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