We are living through one of the most consequential times in technology history. It’s now accepted that AI will dramatically impact the way we work, live, and play. When historians look back on this period, they will likely describe how technology enabled “magical” experiences and transformed businesses and their internal processes.
At Lightspeed, we are lucky to see history in the making and work with some of the most imaginative and innovative founders who are shaping the future.
We hear a lot of pitches, and we see a lot of product demos. And every once in a while there is a product demo that completely surprises us and gives a glimpse into the future.
Avarra is one of those companies.
Avarra brings virtual avatars into the enterprise to unlock a whole new class of applications. By combining fine-tuned LLMs and real-time video and audio with a human-like interface, Avarra has built a new kind of platform for business users to interact, learn, and practice with.
Avarra’s first application is targeted at ramping salespeople faster. Historically, new salespeople have been given a bunch of training materials, done some role-playing, and perhaps practiced with some online certification technologies before being thrown into the real world with live leads. In many cases, this has led to long “ramp times” as well as wasted leads and frustrated potential customers. For established companies launching new products or best practices, it’s an even bigger challenge since the entire field needs to quickly gain experience with the new pitch.
What previous platforms have focused on is giving sales reps knowledge instead of experience. On the other hand, Avarra’s first application is a powerful simulation platform that enables reps to get the experience (“at-bats”) they need to be productive in weeks instead of quarters by interacting with human-like avatars that act like customers, coaches, or buyers. It’s a totally new paradigm to learning, onboarding, and engaging with internal knowledge.
But this is just the beginning. Ramping salespeople is a fantastic initial application because it is a multi-billion dollar problem that can only be solved with generative AI. But the Avarra team is thinking much bigger about how the skills, technology, and models they’re building will prove to be a strong foundation on which to build a broad range of additional next-generation applications.
The Avarra team is no stranger to tackling big ideas. Avarra is led by David Knight, who was previously EVP/GM at Proofpoint, which he helped take from $70M to $1B+ in revenues and a $12.5B exit, and before Proofpoint, David Knight was the VP of Product at Webex, where he helped pioneer video communications in the enterprise. David’s co-founders, Matt Huang, Scott McIntosh, and Chris Iezzoni are all technology veterans of the enterprise world and closely collaborated at Proofpoint on its journey to scale. They’ve iterated quickly and have already proven the impact of their first product in a number of customers.
We are thrilled to have led Avarra’s $8M seed round and are excited to see how this team harnesses cutting-edge AI technologies to build a new suite of enterprise applications.
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