SAN FRANCISCO — Bravado, the professional network for B2B sales, today announced it has raised $26 million in Series B funding led by Tiger Global. The round included community participation from 250 Chief Revenue Officers and VPs of Sales, along with prominent angels like Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Lenny Rachitsky and the Airbnb alumni syndicate, Packy McCormick, and Sahil Bloom. Existing investors Redpoint Ventures, XYZ Ventures, Freestyle Capital and Precursor all participated again. This brings the company’s total raised to $41 million.
The company has also completed its first acquisition with the addition of Compgauge to the Bravado portfolio. Compgauge helps thousands of sales professionals decide which employers to work for with comprehensive salary data, company reviews and interview insights. With this acquisition, Bravado now expands its Talent Marketplace to help salespeople discover if they are being fairly compensated, get interview and hiring help, and search for other career resources.
Founded in 2017 by sales leader turned CEO Sahil Mansuri, Bravado now has over 200,000 Members across 72 countries. Members gain access to a private community to get advice from top sales professionals, build their seller portfolio, and access a career marketplace to find their next role and ensure fair compensation. Bravado’s mission is to help sales professionals be wildly successful via a suite of free resources to level up their career.
“Sales is the most critical function at every company, because they generate revenue and talk to customers. Yet sales hiring and training are stuck in the era of Boiler Room and Glengarry Glen Ross,” said Sahil Mansuri, Founder and CEO of Bravado. “Bravado offers every modern seller the network, professional development, and talent marketplace to help them level up their career.”
The Bravado Community has exploded after the pandemic, when sales professionals were looking for an alternative to the in-person sales floor where reps trade tips and learn from the best. Bravado is the global sales floor, with sales professionals from over 30,000 technology companies, including Salesforce, Google, Facebook, Adobe, Slack, Uber, Dropbox, and Apple, growing their careers. Recently, Bravado has added an exclusive network for sales leaders: over 20,000 VPs of Sales / Chief Revenue Officers are working together to shape the future of the sales profession on Bravado.
“Bravado is capturing a significant market opportunity by building the first professional community that addresses the specific needs of salespeople. With its combination of community, opportunity, and advocacy, Bravado helps salespeople get what they need to build and grow their careers,” said Sam Harland, Partner, Tiger Global. “We look forward to partnering with Sahil and the Bravado team.”
Bravado Jobs: Connecting Top Sales Talent With Vetted Companies
For most technology companies, sales hiring is a massive problem. While the jobs market overall has been volatile throughout the pandemic, sales jobs have been in high demand. By the end of 2021, there were 4.3 million more open sales job openings than salespeople on the market.
The company launched Bravado Jobs at the end of 2021 to fill that huge gap. Bravado is now helping 40+ leading technology companies hire SDRs, AEs, CSMs, and sales leadership. The company scaled from $0 to $4 million in annual recurring revenue in the first 7 months since launch. Bravado Jobs offers sales professionals the opportunity to connect with a curated network of highly vetted sales organizations looking to scale. Every employer included in the marketplace is rigorously vetted and selected from over 30,000 companies from the Bravado Network, ensuring each employer has strong product-market fit, top venture capital backing, strong sales culture and seasoned sales leadership, achievable quotas and on-target earnings (OTEs).
“Every recruiter promises high OTEs, tons of hot leads, and a product that’s flying off the shelves,” said Mansuri. “Yet when the sales professional joins the company, they realize they’ve made a huge mistake. Bravado Jobs ensures that only those companies that deserve to hire top sales professionals, by having a world-class product and strong culture, can recruit from our network. That’s why I personally vet every company before we bring them onboard as an employer.”
Bravado War Room: The Conversations That Aren’t Happening on LinkedIn
With more than 200,000 sales professionals on the platform – up 20x from 10,000 in January 2021 – The Bravado War Room is replacing LinkedIn as the place where top sales professionals come together to get real advice on sales. Members are on a mission to support one another as we challenge the misconceptions around being in sales. Rather than the fluff that permeates LinkedIn, the War Room is a pseudonymous community where sales professionals are reviewing deals, discussing compensation, and learning best practices around selling remotely.
Bravado Seller Portfolio: Own Your Online Professional Identity
The top sales professionals in the world are consultative experts in their field, working hand in hand with their customers to deliver business results and build long-term partnerships. Yet every salesperson’s public profile looks the same on other online professional communities with no way for an employer or customer to know who the top sales professionals are. To make things even more complicated, sales professionals’ private portfolios including their deal history and career accomplishments are stuck inside their employer’s CRM system so when they leave a company all that data is left behind.
Bravado Seller Portfolio was built as a way for sales professionals to showcase their industry expertise, products they are experts in, customers they have worked with, and testimonials vouching for their trustworthiness. With the Bravado Seller Portfolio, salespeople can now proudly highlight their sales accomplishments in a modern, beautiful format and own their comprehensive professional identity.
For more information about Bravado, visit: https://bravado.co.