The following interview is a conversation we had with Leena Joshi, CEO of CloseFactor, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $15+ Million Raised to Automate Repetitive Sales Processes

Leena Joshi
Thank you, Brett. I love this opportunity to talk to your audience. 

Brett
Yeah, no problem. So before we begin talking about what you’re building, let’s start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background. 

Leena Joshi
Sure. My name is Leena Joshi, like you said, and I’m Co-Founder and CEO of CloseFactor. My background has been in software technology space for a long time. I’ve worked at companies like VMware, Blanc, Redis, and then most recently, an advanced AI company called Petchim. And one of the reasons we started CloseFactors because we’re seeing some really exciting developments in the machine learning space that we feel can have a huge impact on B2B companies. 

Brett
Nice. Very cool. Before we begin talking about what you’re building, there more. Let’s start with some quick questions just to better understand who you are as a Founder. So first one is, who do you look up to the most and why? When it comes to tech CEOs, I. 

Leena Joshi
Have to say I’m a woman, and the person who inspired me the most were actually not one person, but a couple of them. VMware had a female Founder, Diane Green, and back in the day, it was a really unusual thing to have a female Founder, so all the more inspiring. She had her own unique style. I loved working at VMware, and I looked up to Diane. Of course. Of the more recent founders, I would say another one is Edith Harbor of Launch Darkly. Launch Darkly also happens to be a customer of ours, and Edith is in a space that caters to developers, which is a very attractive as well as demanding audience. And yet the product, Launch Darkly, delivers so much value to this very exacting audience. It’s really awesome. 

Brett
They’re doing a great job with their outdoor media as well. I see their billboards all over the. 

Leena Joshi
Bay Area and deservedly so. They’re on a roll, and their customers have nothing but fantastic things to say about the value that Launch Darkly brings to them. 

Brett
Nice. I love it. And what about books? Is there a specific book that’s had the greatest impact on you as a Founder? 

Leena Joshi
Well, the founding journey is a difficult one because many of the roadblocks are in your mind and so it’s a matter of just finding the right books that answer all the questions that you have in your head. One of the coolest ones I read in the beginning of the journey was The Secrets of Sandhill Road, which kind of elucidated a lot of questions I had around how does one get started, how does the financing piece work? So I would say I don’t know that has the greatest impact on me, but it certainly unblocked me at the time. 

Brett
Nice. Very cool. And what about the origin story behind CloseFactor? Can you walk us through that? 

Leena Joshi
Yeah, of course. CloseFactor actually was started because of my experience at Splunk and because of the experience of my other co-founders in the machine learning space. Back when were at Splunk, were pivoting from being a log management provider to a broader operational intelligence play. And I felt like a lot of success that Splunk got was because of self discipline in collecting all the right information and positioning Splunk in the context of the company that they were selling into. It’s really important for customers to feel like they’re getting something that is tailored exactly to them. And salespeople were practically building that story by understanding their customers. So well, fast forward to when I was at Petchium and I found I had to do the same thing for my salespeople, which is collect a lot of information about our customers, put it in the context of the thing that were selling. 

Leena Joshi
And I felt like a lot of the work that goes into that research process could be automated just given where Machine Learning was at. And my other two co-founders, ben, who has spent about ten plus years in machine learning, and Eric, who comes from Google and LinkedIn and ran machine Learning for Talent Solutions, also felt the same way and felt like were at a point in technology where we could harness the machine learning algorithms to do this for people. That really was the impetus behind getting CloseFactor started. We wanted to make the research process as automated as possible so that salespeople can spend their time doing what they do best, which is engaging with the customer in the context of the customer’s business problems. 

Brett
Got it interesting. And as I’m sure you’ve seen all over the media lately, AI, machine learning, those are the big buzzwords that it seems like every company is really using. So how are you breaking through that noise and really standing out from all of the others that are trying to use these terms as well? 

Leena Joshi
That’s a great question. I would say, in fact, I’ve heard this from other founders that you really have to be not just innovating in product and the capabilities in your product. You have to be innovative in how you go to market as well. And what I can tell you, and particularly for a podcast like yours, which creates categories or at least highlights the categories that products play in. I would say that one thing that we are doing differently is we are promoting sort of this alignment between marketing and sales in the B to B world. Typically these two teams operate differently, they’re rarely aligned. Marketing does its own thing. And what Salespeople find is the leads that marketing brings in are either not actionable or they have to do a lot more work to make them actionable. And what we’re trying to do is a give all the right things to marketing so they can be precision targeted and bring the right kind of leads into sales and give all the tools to sales so that they can not just take these leads and then have to do a lot of work, but instead have that work already done for them so they can take these leads and start engaging with them. 

Leena Joshi
Be multi threaded inside of accounts so they engage not just the leads that come in, but also the influencers the right budget owners inside those accounts. 

Brett
Got it. Makes sense. And I know you mentioned category there. What are your views when it comes to category? Is this something that’s going to be totally new or is it going to transform existing categories? 

Leena Joshi
I feel like it’s going to transform existing categories and the two categories I would say are marketing and sales. Typically they’ve operated in silos before, mostly because marketing has a job to do around brand creation. And the tools that they have are more like megaphones. Like they do a lot of spray and tray. Sales has their own set of tools and they’re there around automating a lot of the grunt work, but none that bridge the gap between marketing and sales. It actually starts well before we play in something I would call top of the funnel, pipeline generation, pipeline acceleration. But the process doesn’t start with prospecting. The process actually starts with how you define your ideal customer profile, how you segment accounts that belong to that ideal customer profile, what messaging you use with them, and then followed up by how does sales kind of harvest all the work that marketing has done for those accounts. 

Brett
Interesting. And when it comes to ideal customer profile, what’s yours? Who are you guys trying to target with the platform today? 

Leena Joshi
Great question. Our ideal customers are typically companies that have found product market fit and are now scaling that product market fit. So they are typically companies that are CDC and above that are scaling their marketing teams, that are scaling their sales teams and are really looking for a thoughtful and innovative way to acquire customers at the smallest cost possible and as much automation as you can put to use as possible. 

Brett
Got it? It makes a lot of sense. And are there any specific market segments that you’re seeing a lot of traction in or is it really spread across a lot of different markets, just given. 

Leena Joshi
The backgrounds of the founders. We started in software technology areas like DevOps, data analytics, cybersecurity, future of work, and we are expanding from there. But those are really the key areas that we are seeing a lot of traction in. You can see some of the customers on our website launch Darkly, Chronosphere, Zora, and some exciting announcement yet to come. 

Brett
Nice those are some big logos from some very reputable and fast growing tech companies. So I’m sure that helps a lot with trust and credibility. 

Leena Joshi
It does quite a bit. It also helps that all of these companies are in the space of innovating with go to market themselves. So we’re right up there with their cutting edge technology and their cutting edge go to market. 

Brett
Nice and I know you mentioned that in our email earlier today, but we had Martin Mao from Chronosphere on earlier, probably about three weeks ago, and their growth is just amazing. What they were able to achieve, and I think it was two and a half years, is honestly just insane. I think it’s one of the fastest growing software companies to ever exist, which is pretty impressive. 

Leena Joshi
We are so honored to work with Martin. His team has been incredible. They’ve had the most thoughtful approach of scaling their go to market and they utterly, totally deserve the success that they’re seeing. 

Brett
Nice I love it. And in terms of traction, are there any numbers or metrics that you’re okay with sharing? 

Leena Joshi
Well, the metrics that we are proudest of are renewals and expansions. Many of our original customers have renewed, have stuck with us for more than a couple of years. We’ve expanded in many customers. I know I’m not putting any numbers on there right now. It’s just because, well, we have some exciting new announcements coming out. Kind of holding the powder dry for that. But this is what makes us most pleased, is to see our existing customers renewing, expanding into other different solution areas. So that’s the good news. 

Brett
Nice and we’ll have to bring you back again to share the metrics when the announcements gone out. 

Leena Joshi
Yes. 

Brett
Perfect. And going to market is, of course, never easy. What would you say has been the greatest challenge you’ve faced so far and how did you overcome it? 

Leena Joshi
In the very beginning, I would say our challenges were more around, like, is there a product? Is there a market here? And those were dispelled very quickly because we got our first customer, I would say even before we had product that lit a fire under us, and were like, oh, we have a contract before we have product. So that part was, I would not say easy, but it was at least the answers to the questions came soon. The next part that was hard was scaling that from the first one or two customers to finding the right set of functionality that both showcased the value of machine learning as well as the benefits that were reaped by our customers. So that part was, again, not easy, but it was just work that we had to do to say that this set of features were used so much by the people at your company and this was the value that was delivered. 

Leena Joshi
And typically the value delivery can be quantified. I’m happy to share metrics around that. We, for example, did a case study with Launch Darkly where we showcased that the reps that were using CloseFactor were both generating pipeline and closed one at more than double the rate of reps that were not using CloseFactor. So that was pretty cool to prove that value and win sort of the renewal and expansion at Launch Darkly. 

Brett
Nice. And last couple of questions here for you before we wrap. What excites you most about the work you get to do every day? 

Leena Joshi
The customers. We put the customer at the center of everything we do. It’s a great rallying cry for everyone on the team. 

Brett
Amazing. I love it. Well, unfortunately, that’s all we’re going to have time to cover for today before we wrap. If people want to follow along with your journey, where’s the best place for them to go? 

Leena Joshi
www.closefactor.com. And if they have more for me, they can always contact me.

Brett
Amazing. Well, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it. It was really fun to learn about what you’re building and look forward to seeing you execute on this vision and look forward to the IPO.