When Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, founders of Sagetap, started their careers at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were taken aback by the reliance on outdated sales methods like incessant cold emails and calls.
Khanna, a former product marketer, and Hughes, a former sales manager, realized these tactics were ineffective in selling software or providing buyers with the solutions they needed. Determined to create a better approach, they embarked on building Sagetap.
“Company executives are overwhelmed; their inboxes are inundated,” Khanna, Sagetap’s CEO, told Truth Voices. “They’ve expressed frustration, stating there are too many vendors to track and credibility is a concern.” With nearly 400 enterprise tech unicorns and numerous smaller startups, according to CB Insights, the market is indeed crowded.
To tackle these challenges, Khanna and Hughes launched Sagetap. Initially, the platform aimed to offer buyers a space to research and explore options. This strategy took Sagetap to $1 million in ARR. However, Khanna believed the platform could achieve more than just providing informational resources.
The team then developed an AI-powered marketplace atop their research foundation. Now, prospective buyers can browse through Sagetap’s vetted database of software vendors, who pay a subscription fee to remain listed. The platform provides detailed information on each vendor, including publicly available data, pricing, and anonymized feedback pulled from sales calls analyzed by Sagetap’s AI. The AI also ranks vendors and recommends options tailored to users’ specific criteria.
“This is a massive $1 trillion-industry,” Khanna said. “It’s broken, filled with friction between buyers and sellers. We saw what Uber and Airbnb accomplished with their marketplaces and believed the same efficiency could transform the enterprise sales sector.”
Based in San Francisco, Sagetap is profitable, earning revenue through vendor subscriptions and booked meetings. Recently, the company announced a $6.8 million seed round led by NFX, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures and Emergent Ventures. Notably, 15 of Sagetap’s customers, including Oracle, Dell, SecureFrame, and Descope, propelled this funding round.
“We didn’t initially seek funding,” Khanna disclosed. “Our customers approached us with investment interest, prompting us to open a funding round.”
Sagetap’s focus includes high-demand areas like cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, and dev ops. While not the first enterprise software marketplace—giants like AWS have their own—Sagetap stands out by leveraging AI to interpret sales calls for its recommendations.
Since the surge of AI advancements in 2022, many companies have aimed to enhance enterprise software sales using AI. However, most have focused on the seller side, automating parts of the existing model, such as generating sales emails or sourcing prospects more efficiently. Sagetap offers a fundamentally different approach.
Khanna mentioned that they receive frequent inquiries from VCs wanting to feature their portfolio companies on the platform. This indicates the platform’s potential to help software startups gain visibility among large buyers who might otherwise miss them. Though this can resemble a pay-to-play model, Sagetap ensures only thoroughly vetted vendors, considering factors like customer engagement, funding, and market traction, can list. Notably, 73% of vendors who apply are allowed to join.
Buyer satisfaction appears high, as Sagetap has grown to 5,000 buyers over the past five years, with revenue increasing by 2.7x annually.
“The engine is running smoothly,” Khanna noted. “We’re witnessing robust growth. The next year will focus on expanding our community of technology experts, boosting market visibility, and intensifying our efforts.”
