Kickscale raises nearly €1 million to revolutionize sales with AI

Kickscale, an Austrian SaaS startup pioneering sales optimization through artificial intelligence, has secured its first funding round of nearly one million euros to further expand its analysis capabilities for virtual sales and customer meetings.

Investors include scaleup founders Stefan Lederer and Christopher Müller (both Bitmovin and part of YCombinator), Michael Kamleitner (Swat.io, Walls.io), as well as Austrian business angels Hermann Futter (Compass Gruppe) and Gernot Singer (exit from immosuchmaschine). In addition to these investors, funding was secured from the FFG for a joint research project with TU Graz.

Sales calls often fail due to a lack of understanding of customer needs, poorly trained sales staff, or incorrect positioning. Determining why sales conversations go poorly is usually difficult and costly. This is where Kickscale’s AI-powered sales coach comes in. It enables the automated analysis of conversations and the extraction of key customer insights that drive purchasing decisions. By using Kickscale, closing rates and efficiency increase by up to 32%.

The fresh capital will be used to further develop the artificial intelligence and the software. The platform offers an innovative way to reliably identify why sales conversations fail to close and helps to improve them.

The platform analyzes conversations, identifies the strengths and areas for improvement of sales staff, generates automatic meeting summaries, and makes customer needs visible.

“We are convinced that our platform is at the forefront of innovation in digital sales. By leveraging artificial intelligence, we will redefine sales conversations and customer interactions,” says Gerald Zankl, Kickscale CEO & Co-Founder.

“Kickscale’s innovative technology and experienced team will redefine sales. The investment and research funding underscore the potential and the need for such a solution,” says Stefan Lederer, CEO & Co-Founder of Bitmovin, a long-time companion and one of the investors.

The funds will be invested in further innovations, such as aggregated analytics and integrations with third-party systems, as well as in scaling the platform’s sales. Companies across Europe, such as Finway, eCommerceDB, Symvaro, Walls.io, and ContractHero, already rely on Kickscale.

Press Contact

Gerald Zankl, gerald.zankl@kickscale.com

Mobile: +43 664 88697790

Press Photo

The founding team, from left to right: Markus Jenul (CMO), Fabian Riedlsperger (CTO), Gerald Zankl (CEO), and Herwig Gangl (Advisor) at the Kickscale development center on the TU Graz campus. Photo: Sabine Grün

Download original-size press photos via https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hlOj2Yz-BLvUeQWB7ENJ0vvckrppaffp

About the Kickscale Founders

Kickscale is led by an experienced team of former managers and IT experts. Gerald Zankl, Markus Jenul, Fabian Riedlsperger, and Herwig Gangl founded Kickscale to optimize sales. Previous companies where Zankl and Jenul were executives and consultants (Bitmovin, Anyline, Holo-Light, etc.) grew to a total valuation of over $500 million. Riedlsperger is closely linked to TU Graz and is an expert in artificial intelligence. Gangl is a top manager who served as an executive at IBM and a partner at PWC. He brings decades of experience in management and technology consulting. The founders, with roots in Carinthia and locations in Vienna, Graz, and Klagenfurt, established Kickscale in 2020 with the vision of making sales better. Since its inception in 2020, the company has been financed through bootstrapping and support from the KWF (Carinthian Economic Promotion Fund), Vienna Business Agency, and the Austrian Economic Chambers.

About Kickscale

Kickscale (www.kickscale.com/de) is the pioneer in the German-speaking region for sales conversation analysis. The company specializes in optimizing sales and customer meetings using artificial intelligence. The technology enables companies to refine their sales strategies, make data-driven decisions, and develop a deep understanding of their customers, which leads to an average increase in closing rates of 20% and time savings of over 30 hours per month per employee.

Kickscale’s AI-powered sales coach analyzes conversations, suggests improvements, and generates valuable customer insights that can be used company-wide by other departments (e.g., marketing, product, management) to optimize the sales process and increase revenue. The software is used by B2B companies such as Finway, eCommerceDB, Symvaro, Walls.io and ContractHero.

More investor statements

“We use Kickscale ourselves, so we know that a lack of understanding of customer needs, targeting the wrong audience, or poorly coached employees are often the reasons why sales calls fail. Finding out why sales calls fail is difficult and costly. This problem affects all B2B companies with virtual customer interactions. Kickscale offers an innovative way to quickly find out why sales calls fail and how they can be improved. That is what makes this investment so attractive to me.”,

says Michael Kamleitner, founder of Swat.io and Walls.io and an investor in Kickscale.

“Companies spend billions to communicate with potential customers. 80% of that is lost after the first meetings with sales staff due to poor sales calls. Kickscale solves this problem in an unprecedented way and is already very successful, especially in the German-speaking market. Personally, I also see great synergies with my portfolio, as sales is a major topic for all startups.", says Gernot Singer, founder of immosuchmaschine and an investor in Kickscale.

“Artificial intelligence offers countless areas of application in sales. Customers must be understood as well as possible in order to sell more and to adapt one's own offering to the customer. It is essential to know data points from sales calls in order to continuously optimize conversations. This is exactly where Kickscale’s pioneering AI-powered technology helps.”, says Christopher Müller, co-founder of Bitmovin, long-time companion, and investor.

“As a long-time investor in technology-driven industries, I am convinced that artificial intelligence will fundamentally change sales. Kickscale is on the threshold of a revolution that will not only increase revenue and efficiency but also enable unprecedented customer loyalty and market understanding.”, says Hermann Futter, Managing Director of the Compass Group and an investor in Kickscale.

Background information

In September 2023, Kickscale (www.kickscale.com/de) successfully launched the first AI sales coach in the German-speaking region. The founding team, consisting of Gerald Zankl, Markus Jenul, Fabian Riedlsperger, and Herwig Gangl, has now secured an initial funding round of nearly one million to revolutionize sales with artificial intelligence.

Kickscale is a software platform that provides transparent insights into virtual sales and customer conversations, enabling data-driven decisions, identifying potential for improvement, and offering coaching to uncover customer needs.

In addition to the current investment, research, development, and market entry were supported from the beginning by grants from the KWF (Carinthian Economic Promotion Fund), the Vienna Business Agency, and the Austrian Economic Chambers.

The investment will be used to drive the development of new features and technologies as well as to conduct research to meet the ever-growing demands on sales. Kickscale sees itself as a pioneer for the future of sales and customer management and plans to shape the industry through innovative solutions.

Kickscale and changes in the sales environment

Recent developments at Kickscale reflect current trends in sales that are of particular importance for sales teams in 2024. Sales is in a state of flux, and companies must react flexibly to these developments to remain competitive.

A key trend is the increased use of artificial intelligence in the sales process to better understand customers, serve them faster, and simultaneously make processes more efficient. The stronger integration of data analytics and metrics in sales management is another key point. Kickscale enables companies to make data-driven decisions and optimize their sales strategies based on real-time information from sales calls. This trend is becoming increasingly important as companies need to use their resources more efficiently and change strategies faster to be successful.

The investment in Kickscale underscores the importance of these trends and shows that the industry is ready to invest in innovative solutions that can sustainably change sales.

With the fresh capital, Kickscale will set the course for a successful future and drive forward the mission to transform sales through advanced technologies and data-based decisions.