Amid rise in remote work, Dooly announces $25.5 million CAD to scale sales enablement platform

Dooly co-founders

Vancouver-based Dooly has raised $25.5 million CAD ($20.3 million USD) in funding as the company looks to scale its sales enablement software, which aims to reduce the administrative burden on sales professionals.

Dooly touts itself as “the fastest way” to update Salesforce, take notes, and manage deals for sales professionals. The startup’s software is designed to act as a connected workspace, allowing sales workers to sync notes across key systems like Salesforce and Slack, update accounts quickly, and produce real-time “battle cards” (concise compilations of information about a product, market, customers, and competition), based on customer calls.

“We don’t just want to become a big Canadian company, we just want to become a big company, and become a beacon for the space that we play in.”

The new funding consists of $4.2 million CAD in seed financing and a $21.4 million CAD Series A round. The startup initially raised its seed round in September 2020, and following significant interest from investors, decided to raise a Series A round in late October.

Dooly’s co-founder and CEO Kris Hartvigsen told BetaKit the startup always intended to raise more capital, but said the pandemic-driven rise in investor interest accelerated the company’s timeline.

Dooly’s seed round was led by Boldstart Ventures, and also included BoxGroup, Basement Fund, and several strategic investors, such as Dimitri Sirota, CEO of BigID. The startup’s Series A round was led by Addition and included participation from Boldstart Ventures, Battery Ventures, BoxGroup, SV Angels, and Mantis, the venture firm founded by electronic DJ duo The Chainsmokers.

Other strategic Series A investors include Zander Lurie, CEO of SurveyMonkey, and Jay Simons, former CEO of Atlassian. Following the two deals, Ed Sim of Boldstart Ventures joined Dooly’s board of directors.

Hartvigsen claimed Dooly saw significant growth in its user base due to COVID-19, directly related to the shift to remote work. Following the fundraising, Dooly now has its sights set on scaling and plans to put the new capital toward talent and product development.

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Dooly was co-founded in 2016 by Hartvigsen and CTO Justin Vaillancourt. Before launching Dooly, Hartvigsen spent 10 years working at Vision Critical (which has since rebranded to Alida), leading sales teams as executive vice president of strategic alliances and general manager of products.

Hartvigsen told BetaKit that while he was at Vision Critical, he saw firsthand how much of the traditional sales process involves non-selling, administrative work.

“Administrative work is the fine print of a job description that no one wants to be doing,” he said. “This problem exists in every department, but is wildly obvious for revenue teams because every minute spent re-entering data directly equates to lost income.”

“We’re creating really human experiences in the workplace through our product, and trying to help people become the very best version of themselves in their work by removing administrative work, by removing all the grunt work that pains individuals, that keeps them frustrated, that keeps them feeling like the company hasn’t really got their back,” said Hartvigsen.

According to Salesforce’s 2019 State of Sales Report, the average salesperson spends 34 percent of their day selling, which Dooly said leads to lost income for businesses and sales representatives. In 2018, when Dooly raised its first $2 million, Hartvigsen told BetaKit his mission was to automate administrative tasks for sales teams, which he called “knowledge automation.”

According to Dooly, the shift to remote work has increased the need among sales teams for accurate, real-time data. Hartvigsen claimed Dooly’s user growth has more than tripled since the start of the pandemic.

The company currently serves over 1,000 companies, including global revenue teams at SaaS companies such as Asana, Airtable, BigCommerce, Contentful, Figma, Intercom, Lessonly, Vidyard.

“I think the big thing that changed to be totally honest is that we became visible in the marketplace,” said Hartvigsen, regarding the pandemic-driven rise in interest Dooly experienced last fall.

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Hartvigsen said the average Dooly user uses the platform 2.5 to five hours per day and likened the startup’s usage time to that of Slack (according to Slack’s IPO prospectus, users spend more than 90 minutes actively using Slack on a typical workday). The CEO declined to disclose the startup’s revenue growth but emphasized Dooly’s current net revenue retention sits at 162 percent.

For now, the startup is building out its product for revenue teams, but, in the future, also intends to evaluate use cases in other departments.

“The focus for us right now is definitely on recruitment,” said Hartvigsen. “We’re looking to round out our talent with really strong designers [and] really strong engineers.”

In September, Dooly had eight people on its team. Currently, it has 22 and aims to grow to at least 50 by the end of the year.

“We don’t just want to become a big Canadian company, we just want to become a big company, and become a beacon for the space that we play in, connected workspaces,” said Hartvigsen. “[Dooly is focused on] building solutions that help drive mass productivity across the entire organization.”

Image courtesy of Dooly.

Isabelle Kirkwood

Isabelle Kirkwood

Isabelle is a Vancouver-based writer with 5+ years of experience in communications and journalism and a lifelong passion for telling stories. For over two years, she has reported on all sides of the Canadian startup ecosystem, from landmark venture deals to public policy, telling the stories of the founders putting Canadian tech on the map.

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