Klue Launches with $4M To Arm Sales with Better Competitive Intelligence

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 27, 2017 -- Klue announces $4 million in funding to arm enterprise sales and channel teams with competitive intelligence. Led by OMERS Ventures with participation from BDC Venture Capital, Vancouver Founder Fund, SK Ventures and angels including Ryan Holmes (CEO, Hootsuite), Jonathan Ehrlich (Partner, Foundation Capital) and Daniel Debow (former SVP Salesforce, CEO Helpful).

Photo of Klue co-founders Sarathy Naicker (left) and Jason Smith (right).

A photo and video accompanying this announcement are available at
http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/da5bcfef-72ac-479e-8898-2acce046cc3e
http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9d9639b0-33ea-4bee-a477-d1a7edd0f912

There is an explosion of information about companies scattered around the web and streams of content being shared by coworkers inside Slack, Salesforce, shared drives and email. Arming salespeople with relevant intel from the deluge of information is painful. Klue is tackling an underserved problem that every company faces: collecting, curating and distributing competitive intelligence. The platform combines information shared by co-workers with bot collected intel from across the web into battlecards and living dashboards of competitor activity.

Klue solves two problems enterprises face in the battle for sales. First, Klue helps product marketers and enablement teams create and keep competitive content up to date. Second, Klue helps salespeople find and leverage that content inside applications they use every day including Salesforce, Slack, Chrome (browser extension), and email.

The idea for Klue, founded by former President of Vision Critical, Jason Smith, and former Sophos Chief Technologist, Sarathy Naicker was born out of a shared problem both encountered in their previous roles.

“Where this really hits home is with B2B enterprise sales teams,” says Smith. “Thirty percent or more of deals are lost directly to a competitor. It stings to lose a deal that should have been won. Klue gives you a continuously updated lens into your competitors' world so you can better position your company against your rivals, improve your sales strategies with prospects, and ultimately close more deals.”

Naicker believes the key to cracking sales in a hyper competitive marketplace is to use machine learning to unearth key insights that can’t be done on a human scale. “By applying a machine learning intermediary to help scale down the volume of content, and giving enablement teams the tools to deliver, intel is less noisy, more succinct and ultimately more digestible for sales teams to run with.”

“Klue is tackling a real pain point relating to information management, by showing how companies can turn data into an asset that sales teams can use to win deals,” said Sid Paquette, Managing Director, OMERS Ventures. “Jason has assembled a very strong team, complete with deep operational and entrepreneurial experience. We are thrilled to join them on their journey.”

Mid-to-large B2B enterprises including Adaptive Insights, Dell EMC, Hootsuite, Sage, Paychex, K2, Absolute Software, and DXC (spinout of HP) are already using Klue to win more deals.

About Klue
Competitive intelligence for enterprise sales. Klue helps enablement teams deliver battlecards and market intel to the field. It is a lens for enterprises into their competitors' world, continuously updating and connecting dots to help them win more business. Product marketers and enablement teams leverage curated intel from inside their company and across the web to create and update content. Salespeople get access to relevant, digestible insight cards in the tools they use everyday.
http://klue.com

About OMERS Ventures
OMERS Ventures is the venture capital investment arm of OMERS, one of Canada's largest pension funds with over $85 billion in net assets. OMERS Ventures is a multi-stage investor in growth-oriented, disruptive technology companies across North America. http://www.omersventures.com/.

For More Information:
Katie Berg
Communications Director, Klue
[email protected]

Founder Contacts
Jason Smith
CEO, Klue
604-834-8314
[email protected]

Sarathy Naicker
CTO, Klue
604-657-5302
[email protected]

Assets: Logos, Screen captures:
Resources can be found here.

Founder story video here.

Customer Testimonials:
"We've gone from covering 12 companies to 54 with the same team. Klue enables us to cover more competitors and go deeper on the ones that matter.” Jay Nakawaga, Director, Competitive Intelligence, Dell EMC.

"Klue is integral to how Hootsuite competes on a global basis. It takes care of the heavy lifting in decentralizing the process of gathering, contextualizing and distributing intel, and allows our team to focus on the needle movers and bigger strategic issues." Vincent Lo, Director, Product Marketing, Hootsuite.

"With Klue, our account teams leverage the intel they need to compete every day. They love having easy access to web and mobile playbooks that are fresh, up-to-date and full of digestible information they can actually use to win deals.” Michael Schmitt, Chief Marketing Officer, Adaptive Insights

Competitors
Klue is a combination of automated data providers and sales enablement/knowledge management platform. Where a data provider like Owler provides a high level view of any company, Klue combines public with private intel shared by coworkers in email, Slack and Salesforce into a private, consolidated view. Where knowledge management tools like Guru enable users to manually create and update cards, Klue auto-creates and updates cards as well as enabling custom card creation and rolls those individual cards into summary views, or battlecards, that can be accessed by salespeople via email (send an email, get a battlecard), Salesforce (add a competitor to an opportunity, get a battlecard), Slack (backslash battlecard), via mobile app or inside Klue’s SaaS platform.

Product Highlights

• Klue collects millions of articles, posts, reviews, website page changes every day.
• Coworkers share intel into Klue via Chrome extension, email, Slack or Salesforce.
• Changes on any webpage or section of a webpage (competitors or otherwise) are monitored down to the pixel.
• Leverage machine curated, consolidated views of internal and external intel to create and update profiles of companies or topics, battlecards and digests.
• Klue automatically creates, tags and updates cards with competitor job postings, funding, headcount, financials, website changes, news and Salesforce content such as “recent wins” on your behalf.
• Access battlecards and a feed of competitive insights with a native iOS app