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Is there anything worse than being underprepared for a big work meeting?
The reality is that there is a lot of money at stake if a client success manager or an enterprise account manager walks into a meeting with a client unprepared. If that client isn’t fully happy with the software — or they aren’t getting enough value out of it – it is likely they will churn and go looking for a better solution.
But in the past, it has been nearly impossible for enterprise software companies to really know how a client is feeling about their product. They are often “flying blind” because the tools they have at their disposal — like data on product usage and NPS – are lagging indicators, says Charlotte-based entrepreneur Sagar Shukla.
What they don’t have is important information on how key stakeholders are using the software, how they feel about the product, or why certain people at the company aren’t buying into the product at all.
Shukla and his co-founder Nigel Hammond saw this gap in the B2B sales space, and that led them to launch Foresight in 2022.
Get To Know Foresight
Shukla describes Foresight as a “proactive way for client success managers and account managers to track the value that their clients are getting from their solution.” Foresight does this through a Value Assessment, a personalized questionnaire that goes to all the key stakeholders before a big meeting. These Value Assessments can help make sure that everyone is on the same page during important renewal conversations, an implementation meeting, or business review calls.
Foresight Logo
Once the assessment is completed, Foresight generates a Mutual Success Plan that helps a manager better understand the pain points their client is experiencing and what actionable steps they can take to make changes.
The assessments are seeing upwards of 70% response rate and people are spending close to 10 minutes filling them out, something Shukla said is a testament to the fact that they provide real value for teams.
“We identify risks, we identify opportunities, and we ensure that everybody’s getting the value [of the software],” added Shukla.
Foresight can also help client success and account manager teams do “more with less” because they have actionable data that can be seen throughout the organization.
Meet The Team
Shukla, a North Carolina native and graduate of UNC at Chapel Hill, started his career at the media giant Red Ventures before joining a fast-growing FinTech startup called DealCloud shortly after it closed its Series A.
Shukla met Hammond while they were both working at DealCloud. The platform, which works as a CRM for private equity and investment banks, was ultimately acquired by Intapp.
As DealCloud and Intapp grew into large and corporate organizations, Shukla said he wanted to find his way back to the “uncertain and ambiguous” world of startups.
A Move To The Southeast
Neither Shukla and Hammond were based in the Southeast when they started working on Foresight, but they both ended up in Nashville following an investor in town. In true startup fashion, the two build the first iteration of Foresight in Excel while working in a room above their garage.
The product launched officially in 2022 and has already crossed the six-figures recurring revenue milestone. The team recently brought on a publicly-traded company as a customer, which is a big landmark for any startup.
Foresight’s growth has also caught the attention of several key investors. The team recently closed a $1.2 million funding round (though that number is likely to grow). Key Southeast-based investors CreativeCo, Meeting Street Capital, IDEA Fund, Don Rainey, Joe Maxwell, and other strategic angels joined the round.
Alongside the round, Foresight is opening an office in Charlotte to take advantage of the city’s talent and enterprise client pool. Shukla moved to Charlotte earlier this year while Hammond will remain in Nashville to grow the Foresight team from its HQ.
The team, which is currently six employees, plans to double in size over the rest of 2023, Shukla told Hypepotamus.