2.5 Mio. € for the perfect conversation - Peak leads Seed Round for Munich-based Conversation Intelligence start-up bao
August 4th 2021
2.5 Mio. € for the perfect conversation - Peak leads Seed Round for Munich-based Conversation Intelligence start-up bao
- • bao raises 2.5 Mio € in a Seed Round led by VC Peak (1.45 Mio. from Peak + 1.05 Mio. from BayBG and Angels). This is the third German investment for the Amsterdam and Berlin-based VC investor Peak (after GraphCMS, which recently scored another investment round of 10 Mio. US-Dollar and Urban Sports Club).
- • A total of 3.5 million €: Including past investment rounds, bao has now raised a total of 3.5 million € in financing from investors such as Peak and BayBG as well as angel investors such as Alexander Bruehl (SaaS Garage) and Rainer Hoffmann.
- • bao is a Sales-Tech-Company that facilitates sales teams in optimising sales conversion. With Speech Recognition and simple clicks, sales representatives record the course of a call in real time. The intelligent call scripts will not only help sales reps with structuring and documenting sales conversations but will also assist in objections handling. Above all due to the data collection, call scripts can be optimised and sales reps continuously improve by learning from each other.
- • The numbers speak for themselves: Sales teams that use bao have 10% more call activity, a 40% higher chance of conversion to a next stage and a 20% higher success rate in closing deals.
- • Conversation Intelligence: bao operates in the field of “Conversation Intelligence”. This topic is already very popular in the USA. Unlike its US competitors, however, bao does not record complete conversations, conform to GDPR restriction, but works with simple click flows and data from the Sales Representatives share of the conversation. Through AI, the software learns and automatically delivers valuable evaluations and suggestions to improve.
Berlin / Munich, August 04th, 2021: The Munich based Conversation-Intelligence Startup bao (“be-as-one”) raises 2.5 Mio. € in a Seed Round – 1.45 Mio. from Peak + 1.05 Mio. from BayBG and Angels. To date, bao has raised a total of €3.5 million from investor BayBG, well-known business angels such as Alexander Bruehl (SaaS Garage) and Rainer Hoffmann (h&z) and now Peak. Founded in 2017, bao creates transparency for sales teams with Conversation Intelligence.
The bao software leads sales employees through their calls with dynamic call scripts, adapting to the call progression and content in real time, and provides guidance and recommendations for the further course of the call. The results with bao are measurable: sales teams increase their call numbers, have higher conversion rates and close more deals.
“Due to automation and data, sales has evolved rapidly from an art to a science. Naturally there will always be natural sales talents but this new breed of Sales-SaaS like bao will enable companies to scale their commercial efforts faster and more efficiently. bao has proven to help companies by increasing their win rate with 20%. With this track record, their unique offering and the strength of their team, bao solutions has all the right ingredients to create the market standard in Conversation Intelligence.“ – Johan van Mil, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Peak
Intelligent data without full conversation recording - Sales made in Germany
The basis for bao’s situation-specific real time support of sales teams is data from past sales calls. Unlike US players in the field of Conversation Intelligence, bao only uses recordings of the sales staff and their clicks – people on the other end of the line are not recorded. bao structures this data and provides valuable insights with analysis functions and artificial intelligence in order to optimise sales conversations along the entire sales process. From conversation to conversation, the software provides the right approach and triggers to systematically close a deal.
“We will use Peak’s expertise and the investment to further improve and optimise the product and the existing technology. A particular focus will be on the AI we have developed specifically for bao. We are very excited about the collaboration and what the future holds. Peak was our first choice investor. They think in an entrepreneurial and courageous way, and at the same time have a feeling for the important details. We are delighted that Peak has recognised bao’s huge potential. Together we will surely achieve our ambitious goals.” – Patrick Strunkmann-Meister, CEO & Co-Founder bao
A photo of the bao team
(left to right: Benedikt Raschberger (Co-Founder & CTO), Astrid Demlehner (Head of Customer Success), Jan-Niklas Frantz (Head of Revenue), Hanne Rudolph (Head of Finance), Dr. Patrick Strunkmann-Meister (Co-founder & CEO)
About Peak
Peak is an Amsterdam-based venture capital fund financed and run by experienced entrepreneurs. For the past 14 years, Peak has fiercely backed founders across Europe, with a laser focus on early-stage SaaS, marketplace, and platform models. They’ve invested alongside German VCs including Point9, Project A and Rocket Internet as well as international players like Accel, Y Combinator, and ParTech. Peak’s more than 35 investments include global auction marketplace Catawiki (exit to Permira), GraphCMS, a headless content management system (recently raised $10m), Creative Fabrica, a digital platform for the creative class, and Studocu, an international marketplace for study materials and knowledge sharing, which recently raised $50 million. Meet Peak at https://peak.capital/
About bao
Founded in Munich in 2017, the start-up bao helps companies to systematically and measurably improve sales conversations by creating more transparency about the success factors in the sales process. bao provides a situational real time guideline for sales conversations and thus increases the success rate for sales staff. The Conversation Intelligence software uses best practices from past conversations, real-time analyses and an AI that automatically delivers valuable data analyses. Meet bao at https://www.bao.ai/
Contact details
Johan van Mil
johan@peak.capital
+31-654287421
