OIF Ventures has co-led, with US firm Stage 2 Capital, an $8 million seed funding round for online video testimonials collection platform Vouch.
Stage 2 Capital is a go-to-market specialist investor in SaaS businesses.
OIF provided pre-seed funding to Vouch in 2020 and saw the business grow rapidly. While it was still in stealth mode, Vouch won customers such as Canva, Atlassian, HubSpot and Culture Amp.
Substantial prior enterprise sales and technology experience meant co-founders Gary Zurnamer, chief executive, and David Stirk, chief technology officer, were well placed to identify a need and come up with suitable solution.
They built Vouch to solve a specific pain point Zurnamer had experienced more than once. Zurnamer was aware of the power of customer stories in converting sales prospects to customers and the value of video in authenticating such stories. Recruited to lead Canva’s then newly established enterprise sales division, he had access to plenty of engaging customer stories but did not have a system to efficiently video those stories to relay to sales prospects. He had faced similar problems as head of sales at Stackla and content and partnership lead at The Iconic. He decided simple videoed Q&A sessions would be the solution. What was needed was a platform to efficiently collect, edit and store the material.
Zurnamer linked up with Stirk, who has more than 25 years’ experience of technology development including with Calendly and Atlassian, to develop the technology. They soon realised they would solve similar problems for many other companies as well as Canva. Consequently, they set up Vouch to develop an MVP.
As OIF notes, short videos have become the medium of choice for not only for sales promotion and testimonials but for team communications and product feedback. This opens an enormous international marketing opportunity for Vouch, especially as the company is following the example of Canva by offering product via a freemium model.
The company already has more than 65 active paying customers and there is a vast worldwide market in the B2B SaaS sales category alone. The involvement of Stage 2 Capital should help accelerate realisation of this potential.
Image: A Vouch video testimonials interface.