Applied AI Startup LeadCrunch Announces Exponential Growth and New Executives

September 1, 2016 - San Diego, CA: LeadCrunch (www.leadcrunch.com) announced today that more than 2,000 small and medium businesses have signed up for a free trial of its customer discovery platform since it was launched in October 2015. The company provides the world's first self-service artificial intelligence platform that predicts business-to-business sales transactions. The company grew from five to eleven staff in the past three months as they expand operations in San Diego and Chicago.

One of LeadCrunch's first customers, Mr. Bernhard Peters, joined the company as Vice President of Business Development. Peters was formerly the North American Country Manager at Salesforce's #1 most popular listed AppExchange application, Ebsta. Peters relocated to San Diego from London where he grew Ebsta from 20 to 35,000 customers in less than 3 years. "In the past year, LeadCrunch helped us grow by more than 30% per month. I was so impressed with the solution that I just had to join the team," says Peters.

Peters will lead the company's direct sales and channel partnerships. "I was inspired by LeadCrunch's innovative approach to applying artificial intelligence in a practical and effective way for B2B sales and marketing organizations," says Peters. "Their platform was the most impactful solution I've ever implemented in my career, solving real problems for sales and marketing teams in a way that requires zero change-management. LeadCrunch is going to change the way small and medium businesses access the power of advanced analytics, and I'm excited to play a part. Every team member is highly driven, dedicated to customer delight and intensely focused on practical innovation; not just in the product, but also in how the business is run. It is a great culture, driven by a commitment to helping people and companies achieve full potential."

Jeff Cleasby joined the company to head up strategic accounts based out of Chicago. He joins the company from TechnologyAdvice which was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies in 2014, 2015, and 2016. He held previous sales and business development positions at eMedia (a division of Ziff Davis) and Monster.com in the past. "I've always been intrigued by predictive modeling and intent data as it relates to lead generation since being first introduced to semantic search in 2013" says Jeff. "Plus, having worked intimately with several thousand B2B lead generation campaigns over the past four years I have noticed a strong uptick and pattern in marketing teams becoming more strategic in the leads they consume." Jeff's role further positions LeadCrunch as a vital tool for account based marketing (also known as ABM).

LeadCrunch added Steve Biafore as Chief Science Officer. Biafore was one of the first investors in the company. "After seeing the company achieve repeated successes needed to get traction, I wanted to join the team," says Biafore who is a well-known for his pioneering work in applied analytics. He is the co-founder of Global Analytics. Biafore is one of the inventors of HNC's credit-card fraud detection system that now protects more than 2.5 billion credit cards worldwide. FICO bought HNC for $810 million in 2002. His work at LeadCrunch will focus on extending the company's analytic advantage needed to provide better data and insights on small and medium size businesses. "I'm excited to play a role in bringing the power of advanced analytics to small and medium businesses. These businesses are absolutely essential to the global economy especially in terms of the speed and volume of innovation. LeadCrunch helps these companies grow. It's fun to build something of such great importance as part of a great team with a great culture."

More than 100 engineers applied for a single engineering slot. The company selected Greg Lawrence who was one of only two candidates who passed two rigorous code tests and a series of case study interviews. "I joined because this is a place where the power of big data is democratized to small businesses. This is an insurgency where engineers are the revolutionaries against the enterprise." says Lawrence.

LeadCrunch's founder and CEO, Olin Hyde says that culture and location are the keys to the company's growth, "More than anything, we value people. San Diego is a hotbed for artificial intelligence where we can recruit and retain top talent." Last month, Intel acquired San Diego's Nervana Systems for more than $400 million. Earlier this year, Apple bought Emotient for an undisclosed amount. LeadCrunch, AttackIQ and Vergence Technologies are three AI startups that are currently at the EvoNexus accelerator in San Diego. LeadCrunch is backed by ExCapsa Group, a Bay Area seed stage venture capital firm.


About LeadCrunch:
LeadCrunch makes B2B sales and marketing more efficient by delivering high-precision top-of-the-funnel leads using artificial intelligence. It accelerates sales and reduces customer acquisition costs for outbound sales and marketing organizations by automatically finding ideal customer profiles and signals that predict demand. LeadCrunch delivers a subscription of highly targeted accounts with contact information that typically generate 200-300% greater conversions. It is the only self-service predictive B2B lead gen platform that serves the highly underserved SMB market.