It has been one year since Funnelcake won the Dreampitch contest – and the $100,000 USD cash prize that comes with it – at the 2018 Salesforce World Tour.
In that time, Funnelcake, a Kitchener, Ont.-based company which developed a sales funnel dashboard tool, has not only been able to double its staff with the prize money, but has also seen its tool added to the Salesforce App Exchange.
Marko Savic, founder and chief executive officer of Funnelcake, says the effects of winning Dreampitch go beyond simply the financial gain and represented a personal victory for him and everyone else at the company.
“It was huge validation for what we’re building as a company and as a team,” said Savic. “And really motivating to see that all the hard work we’ve put in trying to build something from the ground up is resonating in the market and that the major partner that we’re building our company around is a believer in what we’re bringing to market as a product and that they see the value in it. So it was great validation for the mission that we’re on as a company.”
From a tangible point of view, Savic says one of the greatest byproducts for them was the legitimacy it added to the company, which aided in finding the talent it needed, as well as the acquisition of customers.
“It’s made the cred and reputation a lot stronger for being able to recruit more senior developers who are willing to take a bigger bet on a startup now that they see that a company like Salesforce is involved,” said Savic. “It’s also been a great win on the customer acquisition front where we’re able to give customers or prospects more confidence in the company that they’re investing their dollars in. So it’s really helpful on both the recruiting and the customer acquisition side.”
With the cash prize, along with its newfound ability to attract talent, Savic says that Funnelcake was able to double the size of its team, which has in turn led to a product that he says has improved greatly in the last year. This included an expansion of its product feature last fall.
“Our products we had during dream pitch last year was focused on understanding the opportunity funnel in a sales organization. And part of our mission and the pitch that we had was how do we bring marketing sales and customer success together,” he said. “The expansion on the product we were able to build brings the lead contacts and accounts inside of Salesforce. Which really enabled our customers to start getting reports and actionable alerts related to their marketing and sales handoff. How all of their leads are being worked and whether the reps are following the correct procedures to convert those into the pipeline, as well as the understanding things like account health, and if their customer success teams are engaging with all of their accounts and opportunities in the correct way to ensure that they’re successful over the long term.”
With the improvements and expansion of the product, Savic says Funnelcake aims to provide a truly seamless experience, which he says has been made possible by the addition of Funnelcake to Salesforce App Exchange.
“From a customer point of view, it’s really exciting. It means that they’re able to access all of our dashboards, reports and alerts directly inside of Salesforce. So that means their sales team has one location they need to go to to get all of these insights, and that’s Salesforce. It’s a completely seamless experience.”
