Businesses searching for more direct means to connect with their clients in a B2B setting have been turning to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other channels as email has become an increasingly congested communication medium. However, it can be difficult for firms to keep track of those talks and ensure that they are routed to the appropriate parties.
Pylon hopes to make managing B2B conversations in Slack simpler
Pylon, a young startup, steps in at this point. It assists businesses in managing, prioritizing, and directing communications from different channels to the appropriate individuals. When necessary, it also collaborates with technologies like Zendesk to produce tickets.
Pylon revealed a $3.2 million seed investment today. The business, which debuted in November, was a part of the Y Combinator cohort for Winter 2023.
Marty Kausas, a co-founder of the business, claims that he and his co-founders, Robert Eng, and Advith Chelikani, noticed that businesses were gradually transferring B2B talks from email to Slack for more direct and personal discussions at their prior workplaces. They simultaneously observed how difficult it was for their companies to control these dialogues.
“Consider the scenario if I am a salesperson or a support person trying to manage all [these discussions]. In Slack, there is no way to track anything. The result is Pylon, which, according to Kausas of TechCrunch, “is effectively the data unlock tool for all your consumer discussions that are happening across chat systems.
The company is initially supporting Slack because it must manage most external discussions, but it hopes to soon begin layering on Microsoft Teams and other platforms as well.
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Pylon only has visibility to the channels that you as the customer choose for monitoring, thus it cannot read DMs or listen in on internal company talks. According to Kausas, one early user, Hightouch, is using Pylon to keep an eye on more than 300 common consumer channels.
The business finalized the funding agreement in March, and since then, it has hired two more people, bringing the total to five, including the founders. By the end of the year, it hopes to have close to ten employees. In the upcoming months, they intend to add a few additional engineering and business development employment vacancies. He claims that the organization is seeking the best candidates it can find to fill each open position and that diversity is unquestionably a focus.
Even though his business is starting during a period of economic instability, Kausas is optimistic about its prospects for success since he is addressing a genuine issue that clients have with tracking this kind of behavior. Even though his business is just a few months old, he claims it is already profitable.
The good news is that we have happy, paying clients and that we are making money. Therefore, at this time, we aren’t burning anything, he remarked.
General Catalyst led today’s $3.2 million seed investment, which also included contributions from Y Combinator, Horizon VC, Airangels, and Comma Capital.