Toronto-based startup Glowstick has raised a $1.3 million CAD pre-seed funding round to help B2B companies identify sales opportunities over video calls.
Glowstick has piqued the interest of notable AI angel investors, including Element AI co-founders Yoshua Bengio, Jean-Francois Gagne, and Nicolas Chapados. The trio invested in Glowstick via their ApSTAT fund.
“Glowstick is solving a critical issue for B2B firms: understanding where opportunities exist with customers.”
The investment round was led by Cleo Capital with participation from tech accelerator Entrepreneur First.
Additional angel investors include Saumil Mehta, a general manager at Square, Josh Tessier, previously head of engineering at Shopify and founder of Ramen Ventures, and Mike Janzen, an angel investor with multiple exits.
Glowstick’s platform helps businesses create new sales by surfacing leading indicators from recorded customer video calls. Its technology can identify visual cues, body language, or key words that stand out in a video call.
“With more revenue responsibility shifting to post-sales teams, Glowstick is solving a critical issue for B2B firms: understanding where opportunities exist with customers,” said Matt Paulker, an investor from Cleo Capital who joined Glowstick’s board of directors as part of the deal. Paulkner called Glowstick’s technology “the first of its kind.”
Glowstick was co-founded in Toronto in 2020 by Masha Krol, a former employee at Element AI, and Anwar Jeffrey, a Western University computer science graduate.
Glowstick said its technology is adept at picking up subtleties from video calls that would otherwise require a human business development representative to uncover. With over 80 percent of upselling opportunities originating from such calls, according to Glowstick, the time for developing this technology is ripe.
Glowstick’s investment from Element AI founders follows Krol having previously worked at the company prior to it being acquired by ServiceNow in 2020 for $230 million USD.
Element AI’s co-founders have invested in a number of AI companies, including Armilla AI and Waverly (created by fellow Element AI founder Philippe Beaudoin). Bengio has also invested in Ubenwa Health, which is a spin-out of AI research group Mila. After exiting from Element AI, Gagne and Chapados went on to work with ServiceNow, where Chapados remains as VP of research.
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