LeadGenius is a privately held
software as a service
Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software.
SaaS is con ...
,
marketing automation
Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations to more effectively market on multiple channels online (such as email, social media, websites, etc.) and automate repetitiv ...
, and
demand generation
Demand generation is the focus of targeted marketing programs to drive awareness and interest in a company's products and/or services. Commonly used in business-to-business, business-to-government, or longer business-to-consumer sales cycles, d ...
startup located in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
. The company uses a combination of
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
and
human computation
Human-based computation (HBC), human-assisted computation, ubiquitous human computing or distributed thinking (by analogy to distributed computing) is a computer science technique in which a machine performs its function by outsourcing certain ste ...
to identify and communicate with targeted sales leads. The company's crawlers comb through websites, business directories, government filings, and credit data to train a machine learning system for
business-to-business sales.
LeadGenius is the first
crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
company to set a
minimum wage
A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. Bec ...
for its workers tied to the
cost of living
Cost of living is the cost of maintaining a certain standard of living. Changes in the cost of living over time can be operationalized in a cost-of-living index. Cost of living calculations are also used to compare the cost of maintaining a c ...
in the country they are working in.
The company launched in
Y Combinator
Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...
’s Summer 2011 class under the name MobileWorks. It has since raised $6 million in venture funding from investors such as
Sierra Ventures
Sierra Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in San Mateo, California. It is focused on early stage emerging technology companies.
History
The firm was founded by Peter Wendell in 1982 in Menlo Park, California. Early investments ...
,
Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California.
Andreessen ...
,
Alexis Ohanian
Alexis Kerry Ohanian ( hy, Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Stev ...
,
Mitch Kapor
Mitchell David Kapor ( ; born November 1, 1950) is an American entrepreneur best known for his work as an application developer in the early days of the personal computer software industry, later founding Lotus, where he was instrumental in deve ...
,
Dave McClure
David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups (now 500 Global), serving as CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capita ...
, and
Sam Altman
Samuel H. Altman ( ; born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, and blogger. He is the CEO of OpenAI and the former president of Y Combinator.
Early life and education
Altman grew up in St. Louis, Missouri; his mothe ...
.
References
{{Authority control
Privately held companies based in California
Companies based in Berkeley, California
Companies established in 2011
2011 establishments in California