While relationships can eventually lead to a close deal, long-term relationships carry a lot more baggage. Email interactions, documents, and meetings.
Affinity will take Ray Zhou's data exhaust (all of the daily communications and interactions) and apply machine learning analysis to identify who is most likely to get that first meeting and close the deal.
Today's announcement by Menlo Ventures led by Sprints Capital, Pear Ventures and Sway Ventures. Teamworthy was also joined by Advance Venture Partners Brian N. Sheth, Sprints Capital, Sprints Capital, Pear Ventures and Sway Ventures. This new funding brings the total funding to the company to $120 million since its inception in 2014.
Affinity is based in San Francisco and focuses on sectors like venture capital, investment banking, private equity, consulting, and real estate. Zhou explained to TechCrunch that there are no customer relationship management systems or networks that can cater to the needs of long-term relationships.
After realizing that there was no software that could be used to manage relationships in a transactional setting, Zhou, a Stanford graduate, and Shubham Goel, Shubham's co-founder started the company.
According to him, data from traditional CRM systems that contain contact information and company profiles for up to 90% of companies is outdated or incomplete. Gartner, a market researcher, reported that the global CRM software market will grow 12.6% to $69 Billion in 2020.
Zhou stated that it is nearly as big as sales. According to our worldview, relationships are the largest industries in the world. While some might disagree, relationships are an asset class. They are the currency that distinguishes winners and losers.
Affinity instead created a new type of CRM that automates the input of data and adds information like revenue, staff size, funding and other data sources to give a score to potential opportunities and increase the chance of closing deals.
Zhou plans to use the funding to increase sales, marketing, and engineering to support new products or customers. Zhou anticipates that the company will have more than 200 employees by next year.
The company's platform has processed over 18 trillion emails, 213 million calendar events, and currently drives more than 500,000 new introductions. It also tracks 450,000 deals per monthly. It boasts more than 1,700 customers from 70 countries. This includes companies such as Bain Capital Ventures and SoftBank Group.
Menlo Ventures partner Tyler Sosin said that he met Zhou, Goel, and at the time they were looking at CRM companies. However, it was not until many years later that Affinity was mentioned again, when Menlo wanted to work with an advanced platform.
Sosin, a user of Affinity, said that the platform provides him with the data he needs and eliminates the manual entry and friction.
Affinity has always been interested in helping CRMs reach the next generation. Affinity is now defining itself in a new category, relationship intelligence, and is just crushing it in private capital markets. Their growth rate is impressive and they are solving a difficult problem that few other companies in this space can do.
