Walnut raises $35M in Series B funding led by Felicis after growing 700% in four months

The SaaS sales process is no longer about product features or the talent of the sales team. It’s about providing prospects an engaging experience and a valuable, quick, personalized, and consistent sales process. About a year ago, one startup decided to redefine inside sales as we all know it.

Enter Walnut, a New York-based tech startup and the provider of a first-of-its-kind platform that makes the sales demos process seamless and automated. In May 2021, Walnut launched the world’s first sales experience platform to make sales and product demos easier for remote sales teams. Walnut’s solution eliminates the need for back-end teams and streamlines the process by placing full control back in the hands of the sales team. Since then, the company has grown exponentially as investors flock to invest in the company.

The Walnut Sales Experience Platform delivers B2B prospects a cohesive experience that helps them better understand how a product meets their needs. From the company side, by tracking the prospect’s journey and collecting interaction data, the Walnut platform provides sales teams with valuable insights on the pains their prospects face and provides insights on how to solve them.

To further accelerate the growth of its platform, Walnut announced today it has closed a $35 million Series B funding round led by Felicis Ventures. The raise comes just four months after announcing an oversubscribed Series A, bringing Walnut’s total funding to date to $56 million. The company has grown 700% in ARR since commencing the previous round.

Walnut will also use this fresh round of financing to meet the increasing customer demand, grow the team across its different offices in the U.S, Europe, and Israel, as well as continue developing its unique technology and platform.

Other backers in this round include strategic angel investors such as Sarah Franklin (President & CMO, Salesforce), Frederic Kerrest, (Executive Vice Chairman, COO and co-founder, Okta), Ariel Cohen (CEO and Co-Founder, TripActions), Eynat Guez (CEO and Co-Founder, Papaya Global), Michael Shaulov (CEO and Co-Founder, Fireblocks), Kim Walsh (VTP GTM, HubSpot), Ryan Carlson (CMO, Okta), Stacey Epstein (CMO, Freshworks), Stephanie Robotham (marketing exec, former Salesforce and Gainsight), James Ireson (CRO, Funnel) and more.
Existing investors NFX, Eight Roads Ventures, and A Capital also participated in the round.

Founded in January 2020 by serial entrepreneurs Yoav VIlner and Danni Friedland, Walnut’s drag-and-drop solution also eliminates the need for back-end teams and streamlines the demoing process by placing full control back in the hands of the sales team. To achieve a fail-proof experience, the demos are run live, even when the real product is offline.

“For the first time ever, SaaS companies can put the needs of their prospects in the center, providing them with a memorable experience that converts sales,” said Walnut’s CEO, Yoav Vilner. “We are excited to be partnering with Felicis as our lead investor in this round as we continue to scale.”

Walnut’s no-code platform enables customer-facing teams to create customized product demos quickly and efficiently, integrating them into their sales and marketing processes, reducing sales closing time and generating insights.

Prior to Walnut, product demos were a massive pain point for all sides. Walnut alleviates the pain point of a generic experience for prospects. Additionally Walnut allows users to track tangible insights leading to better clarity for team leaders.

As the creator of this trending tech category, Walnut is already helping almost 100 SaaS customers provide great sales experiences for their prospects. The company’s fast-growing client list includes Adobe, Dell, Medallia, NetApp, Treasure Data, Funnel, People AI, and ContractBook.

“Walnut is the first and leading Sales Experience platform that is revolutionizing how go-to-market teams interact with customers by increasing conversions, shortening the sales cycle, and adding deep PLG insights to the revenue funnel,” said Viviana Faga, General Partner at Felicis.

“We were blown away by our conversations with customers, who had shortened their time to sale by 2.5 weeks, without writing a line of code. Walnut is clearly the leader in the Sales Experience category, and this new funding will accelerate hiring to manage inbound demand. Every company needs a sales experience platform to accelerate the time to sale and to deeply understand the product value proposition via powerful analytics. I could not be more excited to join the board of Walnut and partner with Yoav, Danni, and the team during this exciting time of growth.”

Walnut has also been featured in top publications, such as “Top 50 Startups to Work for”, “Top 3 Must-Have Startups for 2021”, “Best NYC Enterprise Startups” and “Product Hunt’s Product of the Week.”