Toplyne raises USD $2.5 million to help freemium businesses accelerate growth Toplyne is pioneering technology that lets sales teams at PLG (product-led growth) companies increase conversions within their freemium user base
San Francisco, US
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November 16, 2021 08:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
Toplyne, a SaaS platform that enables product-led growth companies to increase their freemium user conversion rates, today announced US$2.5 million in funding by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Together Fund, and angel investors from Canva, Freshworks & Zoominfo.
The genesis of Toplyne happened at Sequoia India when 2 out of the 3 founding team members of former investment advisors noticed that there was a fundamental shift happening in how modern software was being bought. Software buying decisions were no longer happening in the corner offices of high-rise buildings but rather in the bustling trenches of sales, product, engineering, design, amongst others. The most exciting modern SaaS companies (Zoom, Canva, Slack) were riding this wave of bottom-up software adoption embodying a philosophy called product-led growth (PLG). Come early 2021, Toplyne’s founders noticed that eight in ten early-stage SaaS founders were building their companies for PLG. And to top it all off, June 2021 saw the world’s largest SaaS company (Salesforce) announce its plan to rebuild itself in the image of the world’s pioneering PLG company (Slack). PLG had officially arrived.
“Every decade, there has been a fundamental evolution in SaaS go-to-market strategy. The 2000s were the decade of the sales-led motion. The 2010s saw the evolution of inbound marketing as the default. We’re at the cusp of the third evolution in SaaS GTM strategy, and product-led growth (PLG) is going to be the default motion of the future” said Ruchin Kulkarni, Co-founder at Toplyne.
The Toplyne team spent several months speaking with hundreds of revenue leaders at PLG companies across the spectrum - starting with early-stage companies and going all the way up to public market giants. The team discovered that sales in this environment is more difficult than ever before. While PLG opened the floodgates for new user signups, finding users who were likely to become paying customers was harder than ever. To sales teams, it almost felt like finding a needle in the haystack, since most PLG companies have a 1% to 5% free to paid user conversion rate.
“After speaking with hundreds of PLG companies, we realized most companies were flying blind. Moreover, even the very best had spent several quarters (if not years) & hundreds of thousands of dollars building complex internal tools which at the end of the day didn’t get the job done“ said Rishen Kapoor, Co-founder & CEO at Toplyne
It's been five months since the company was founded and the team has rolled out the closed beta version of the product to its first customers - a spectrum of early-stage SaaS companies to mature PLG companies like Canva (quote below). The product is a plug-and-play platform that enables sales teams at PLG companies to identify and focus on the users and accounts that are most likely to convert. Toplyne does so by analyzing user behaviors within a product and determining which users have shown high intent to buy. Most importantly to sales teams, Toplyne can go live within minutes, without the need for favors from their internal engineering teams! Early customers like InVideo have seen a 2x increase in sales conversion rates - case study.
“Millions of people around the world use Canva to achieve their goals – from high school students to small business owners and the Fortune 500, it’s important that we’re able to identify users where our premium subscriptions are the right fit and can add value to the way they’re using our platform. We’re looking forward to using Toplyne to effectively target and scale these efforts at our speed of growth while continuing to deliver value to our community of users across the globe.” said David Burson, Head of Product, Growth & Monetization at Canva.
“Our product’s first version went live on Day 30 of the company’s existence when we onboarded our first customer - InVideo. When we saw their sales conversion rate double in just a few days, we knew we were onto something.” said Rohit Khanna, Co-founder at Toplyne and former VP-Product at Clevertap.
With a mission to “help product-led companies bring delight to their users” Toplyne is committed to becoming a one-stop-shop for PLG businesses to solve their unique problems. Whether it’s bubbling up the most engaged users for sales calls or building plug-and-play features to help traditional companies transition to product-led, the company’s goal is to be in service of the end-users of software.
"Founders and builders of product-led growth companies face the challenge of sales prioritization every day! Zeroing in on users who are most likely to pay is key to future-proofing your success. The Toplyne team’s experience in this sector, both as investors and entrepreneurs, convinced us that they’re the right team to solve this problem, and we're thrilled that Together Fund can help them scale." said Girish Mathrubootham, CEO & Founder, Freshworks (NASDAQ: FRSH)
Toplyne is also backed by several prominent angel investors including Arjun Pillai (SVP, Strategic Growth, ZoomInfo), Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad), Shashank Kumar & Harshil Mathur (Razorpay), Kunal Shah (CRED), and Gaurav Munjal (Unacademy).
About Toplyne
Toplyne is a technology startup that lets sales teams at product-led SaaS companies increase conversions within their freemium user base. The company was founded in June 2021 by Rishen Kapoor and Ruchin Kulkarni who were earlier with Sequoia India and the former VP of Products at Clevertap, Rohit Khanna. To learn more, visit www.toplyne.io.
About Surge
Surge is Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program for startups in India and Southeast Asia. Surge combines $1 million to $2 million of seed capital with company-building workshops, a global curriculum, and support from a community of exceptional mentors and founders. The program’s goal is to supercharge early-stage startups and give founders an unfair advantage, right out of the gate. For more information on Surge, visit www.surgeahead.com.
Contact Details
Toplyne
Ruchin Kulkarni
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