In a landscape where conventional methods of outbound sales are losing momentum, Bluebirds, a startup founded by former LinkedIn leaders, is leading the charge by harnessing the power of AI. Today, the company proudly announces securing $5 million in seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Established in 2022, Bluebirds distinguishes itself by employing AI to unearth distinct triggers that offer Go-to-Market (GTM) teams invaluable insights into the prospects they should target. This empowers them to engage the right individuals with the right message at the right time, all at an impressive scale.
The company has outlined its intention to utilize the funding to onboard skilled data and AI engineers, as well as introduce more triggers to its platform. This expansion aims to provide a comprehensive solution, assisting teams in building robust pipelines and expediting deal closures while reducing customer acquisition costs. The investment round also included the participation of Y Combinator, 1984 Ventures, SOMA Capital, and sales tech veterans Godard Abel and Dharmesh Shah.
AI and ML: Automating Triggers
A few years ago, sales representatives conducted widespread outreach by profiling potential customers and sending out cold emails and calls. While this approach proved effective, the current landscape presents challenges. Traditional outreach channels have become saturated due to increased competition, compounded by the integration of AI-driven spam filters.
During their tenure at LinkedIn, Kunal Punera and Rohan Punamia, the minds behind Bluebirds, engaged with numerous sales leaders and identified these shared obstacles. Subsequently, they launched Bluebirds to tackle these issues with AI-driven triggers, such as identifying past customers who trust the solution and recently switched jobs, compelling events extracted from SEC filings, and insights derived from job posting descriptions.
To generate these triggers, the company processes a vast amount of web data using a combination of Large Language Models (LLMs) and classical machine learning techniques. For example, the job change trigger offered currently necessitates users to upload a CSV file of their existing customers or connect their Salesforce instance. Once the contacts are integrated into the platform, Bluebirds’ proprietary algorithms pinpoint the most relevant options and match them with unique public profiles to identify job changes.
“If a job change is detected, another algorithm assesses whether it’s a legitimate one. Finally, the platform intelligently ranks the final leads based on an ideal customer profile score, created by analyzing past deals, enabling reps to focus on the most promising leads first,” Punamia explained to NextUnicorn.
Notably, Abel, the CEO of G2, employed the tool and identified 10,000 job change leads within 24 hours, ultimately generating $100,000 in pipeline revenue the following week. Presently, over 100 companies have embraced Bluebirds to attain similar benefits, including notable players like OneSignal, Front, Splash, and Simon Data, according to Punamia.
Interestingly, the AI tool’s basic offering is provided for free, allowing users to monitor an unlimited number of contacts for unlimited job change leads. However, to benefit from features like monthly updates of the job change list, human validation of leads, and Salesforce integration for distribution to GTM teams, customers will need to subscribe at a cost of $1,000 per month.
Expanding the Arsenal of Triggers
Bluebirds envisions continuing its innovative work by deploying the funding to expand its team with more data and AI experts and introduce new triggers for lead identification. Punamia expressed, “Intent extracted from job descriptions and compelling events from SEC filings are currently in beta testing, with several more triggers actively in development. Leveraging LLMs is a powerful technology, but using them effectively requires both art and science. We are rapidly pushing the boundaries of this technology to scale outbound efforts thoughtfully.”
While Bluebirds’ approach to outbound sales, centered on LLMs, is novel and distinct, it’s not the sole player dedicated to providing sales representatives with pertinent intelligence to enhance their ability to identify and close more deals. Other competitors in this space include ZoomInfo (which acquired Chorus for $575 million), Uplead, Outreach, and Apollo.io.
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