Forma.ai has purchased fellow Toronto-based sales software startup SeaMonster in what marks its first acquisition to date.
Forma.ai sells artificial intelligence-powered sales performance management software to businesses. The company’s technology helps organizations optimize how they compensate their salespeople.
Forma.ai founder and CEO Nabeil Alazzam said the deal brings together the “best of both worlds.”
Combining SeaMonster’s capabilities with sales incentives “just makes sense,” Forma.ai founder and CEO Nabeil Alazzam told BetaKit in an exclusive interview. The fellow Toronto-based startup has developed a software-as-a-service platform designed to provide accurate sales activity monitoring and enable sales process compliance.
“It really kind of achieves both of our visions,” said Alazzam. “We are looking to be as data-driven as possible in how we think about motivating sellers. They were hoping to redefine how organizations manage the sales process. Bridge these two things together and now you get the best of both worlds.”
Both companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal to BetaKit. Through the acquisition, which recently closed, Forma.ai has acquired all of SeaMonster’s tech but not all of its employees. SeaMonster co-founder and CTO Jesse Lancaster has joined the company as vice president of data engineering, while co-founder and CEO Kevin North is staying on as an advisor. Per North, the two companies will share some contractors going forward.
Traditional sales compensation has been based predominantly on outcome. By introducing activity-based incentives through its acquisition of SeaMonster that encourages adherence to a particular sales process, Forma.ai sees an opportunity to both improve customer experience, drive better outcomes over the long run, and maximize the return on investment (ROI) they see from sales compensation spending.
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“Now I can take that data, and I can use it as a part of the incentive design process to truly reward sales reps [who] actually follow the process and run a deal through a customer-centric lens, whereas historically, $200,000 deals would have been paid the exact same way, even if this one created a very poor customer experience and this one created an outstanding customer experience,” said Alazzam.
Speaking with BetaKit, North described the product fit between Forma.ai and SeaMonster as “exceptional.” Lancaster told BetaKit that joining Forma.ai “was an obvious choice” for him.
“I’ve worked with the Forma.ai team on and off for almost four years, and I know how talented and hardworking they are, and I believe in Forma.ai’s mission,” said Lancaster. “Combine that with the opportunity to continue to work on some of the problems that SeaMonster was trying to solve by integrating that technology into the Forma.ai platform and it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made in my career.”
Kevin North described SeaMonster’s product fit with Forma.ai as “exceptional.”
As a standalone company, North said SeaMonster had seen a “great response” to its beta program and was already working with several customers. The startup was in the early stages of raising its next funding round and building enterprise features when its discussions with Forma.ai began to progress.
Conversations between Forma.ai and SeaMonster about a product integration began last summer and by early 2024, the two companies realized that they could accomplish more as a single entity. “We saw the potential to bring SeaMonster’s ability to validate a salesperson’s activity across a sales process with Forma’s ability to dynamically incentivize that same individual’s compensation,” said North.
Going forward, Alazzam said that Forma.ai plans to offer SeaMonster as a fully integrated product within its suite.
The deal comes two years after Forma.ai closed approximately $58 million CAD in Series B funding from ACME Capital, Crosslink Capital, Gaingels, and existing backers Golden Ventures, Uncork Capital, and Xfund to scale its platform.
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Shortly after securing this funding in May 2022, which came as market conditions were beginning to deteriorate, Forma.ai laid off 18 percent of its staff to focus on “fiscally responsible growth tied to market expectations” amid the tech downturn.
Today, Forma.ai has 144 employees and claims to remain one of the fastest-growing companies in the sales performance management space with three-year revenue growth of more than 495 percent, according to the 2023 Deloitte Canadian Technology Fast 50 list. The company also recently crossed $25 billion in total sales commissions processed.
Alazzam attributed this performance to Forma.ai’s function as both a revenue-driving and cost-saving tool: “With Forma.ai, we’re enabling our customers to reduce their costs and drive a much larger ROI on one of the largest cost centres that they have.”
The CEO noted that Forma.ai has explored other acquisitions before and remains open to making more in the future. “This was a perfect combination where we’re adding functionality that does not exist in the market today and solving a problem that’s faced directly by our customers,” Alazzam said.
Feature image courtesy Forma.ai.
