This husband and wife duo has multiplied by 10 the valuation of his start-up to 220 million dollars in eight months

Entrepreneurs Niji Sabharwal and Jenn Knight had it much easier to raise funds recently than they did during their startup round in June 2020. Then the founders of AgentSync just showed up in Denver – a city where they don’t. had previously spent just a long weekend – with a -up minivan and a new empty house. Knight, the startup CTO, was pregnant. “I knocked on the neighbors’ door to get a WiFi password,” explains Sabharwal, its CEO.

The founding husband-and-wife duo had a much easier time with AgentSync’s new Series A funding round, a $ 25 million round that valued the company at $ 220 million – 10 times more than its evaluation of just eight months ago. This time around, the startup, which tracks licensing data from insurance brokers for agencies and carriers, has come up without the need for an updated pitch deck.

As first reported in the Forbes Midas Touch newsletter on Sunday, the new cycle of AgentSync quickly came together, the result of a mix of founder credibility, rapid growth, and a popular product. Once at the center of Zenefits’ high-level regulatory issues in 2015 – license cuts that might have benefited AgentSync – Sabharwal turned to Zenefits founder and former CEO Parker Conrad for his first review during of its beginnings. It was through Conrad that he met many of the startup’s startup investors, led by Elad Gil and Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital in August 2020.

AgentSync still had 80% of that $ 4.4 million funding round when, in a strategy session with Gil, the solo investor encouraged Sabharwal to take more money and act faster. This time, another Denver startup connected them to Operator Collective; another old Zenefits connection, meanwhile, has moved in to co-lead the tour. David Sacks, PayPal and Yammer veteran, had invested in Zenefits while under Conrad; Following the company scandal, he served as interim CEO in the turnaround. Conrad and Sacks are not friends. But both saw the potential of AgentSync’s tools to prevent such situations in the future. Sacks’ venture capital firm Craft Ventures co-led Series A, with Conrad giving Sabharwal his blessing. Through Sacks, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff also personally cut a check.

Reach $ 220 Million So Quickly – Knight, who met Sabharwal at LinkedIn, held a leadership role at Stripe until he joined the startup full-time less than a year ago. one year – was only possible due to a combination of factors, including its growth rate and market size. But Sabharwal points out another key differentiator he says entrepreneurs don’t appreciate enough: transparent communication.

AgentSync sends monthly updates in the first week of every month like clockwork; these updates provide detailed breakdowns of its customer and sales and spend data by department, without notice. This is how the Sabharwal teams worked at LinkedIn and Zenefits, he says; he’s surprised more startups aren’t following. “Really good data driven updates is the biggest differentiator for us,” he says.

This makes it possible to have income which increased by 6x in 2020 and by 10x the previous year; With 14% of recurring revenue coming from clients expanding their own distribution channels using the tools, and 9% from a broker recruiting product still in pilot phase, AgentSync may also indicate that its addressable market is growing, along with it. customer churn rate, according to its CEO, remains at zero so far. (Even Zenefits’ notoriety played to Sabharwal’s advantage, he says, as curiosity about his experiences there encouraged some potential clients to take his call.)

But Sabharwal says any entrepreneur can benefit by committing to data and sharing freely with insiders. “Creating a lot of transparency and visibility means that when the time comes for us to say, ‘hey, we want to fund these new R + D initiatives’, we don’t have to go and convince anyone. They know us, they trust us, they see the updates. It’s a quick conversation. ­

The self-described founders of AgentSync plan to use the funding to accelerate their end goal of linking their past work experiences with something like a LinkedIn for insurance agents, which can track and maintain information. compliance wherever they work.

This means AgentSync will hire, something other than startup says it does differently. Most of the company’s product and engineering teams – which include around 20 of its roughly 50 employees – are women, a feat according to Sabharwal was only possible by actively recruiting from different candidate pools and putting end to addiction to warm recommendations. “It’s incredibly difficult, but it’s really important for us as a company to have a bunch of different perspectives at the table,” he explains. “We don’t have a dominant group of people, and that makes our decision making so much better.”