hub Launches with $1M Funding - Productivity for Technical Sales

Hub Launches with $1 Million Seed Funding to Empower Technical Pre-Sales

A new productivity platform, Hub, designed specifically for technical pre-sales teams, has officially launched after securing $1 million in seed funding.

Origins and Founding

Hub was established in 2020 by Freddy Mangum, serving as CEO, and Karl Gainey, the company’s CTO. Both founders brought prior experience within the technical sales sector to the venture.

Recognizing inefficiencies in existing workflows, they identified a significant pain point: the reliance on spreadsheets for business management. Extensive research, including surveys of sales engineers across various organizations, revealed a common struggle.

The Problem with Existing Processes

Professionals were dedicating substantial time to tasks such as data consolidation for reporting and manual data entry into CRM (customer relationship management) systems. This was diverting their focus from core sales activities.

“These repetitive, administrative duties were detracting from valuable selling time,” explained Mangum. “We also observed that technical sales professionals consistently deliver critical value, often operating behind the scenes to drive enterprise-level deals.”

Developing a Solution

Driven by these insights, they began developing a more streamlined solution to manage the daily technical sales activities of presales, solution architects, and sales engineers.

The shift to remote work accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic further underscored the need for dedicated commercial tooling, as highlighted by Mangum.

Hub's Core Offering

Based in San Francisco, Hub presents itself as a SaaS application designed to seamlessly integrate with and enhance existing CRM systems and productivity tools.

As a personalized productivity platform, Hub empowers individual contributors to effectively manage the sales cycle. This enhanced visibility facilitates more accurate forecasting and allows organizations to pinpoint areas for investment and implement real-time corrective measures.

“Our platform is engineered to automate routine tasks, enabling teams to concentrate on high-impact activities and ultimately close more deals,” Mangum stated.

An Underserved Market

Mangum believes that targeting technical sales professionals represents a largely untapped market, presenting a significant growth opportunity.

Key Investors

The company’s investors include Tom Noonan, General Partner at Atlanta-based TechOperators, and Kyle Porter, CEO and co-founder of SalesLoft.

The Impact of Remote Work

Noonan observed that the pandemic posed a challenge to maintaining the effectiveness of enterprise sales forces while operating remotely.

“The primary concern wasn’t customer engagement; it was how to conduct the technical aspects of the sales cycle remotely – demonstrations, integrations, modifications, and ensuring clear communication aligned with customer needs,” he explained to TechCrunch. “This underscored the necessity for the current sales model.”

A Shift in Perspective

Noonan anticipates that teams will re-evaluate the value of extensive travel and on-site visits.

“Customers are increasingly comfortable with remote interactions, and many are no longer based in traditional office settings,” he noted. “This creates a challenge for solution architects, who are crucial in bridging the gap between a customer’s initial interest and a definitive conclusion that a system’s capabilities meet their technical, integration, and functional requirements.”

He believes Hub is well-positioned to address this challenge.

Diversity and Inclusion

Hub is committed to fostering a diverse team, reflecting the backgrounds of its founders – Mangum, a Bolivian immigrant, and Gainey, who is Black. The company’s development team is based in Argentina.

“Having personally navigated ESL programs upon arriving in this country, I am passionate about ensuring that opportunities are not limited by language barriers,” Mangum emphasized.