Key takeaways

If you’ve got a great idea for a global market, start talking to international backers and customers from the outset.

When starting out, build a strong team with complementary but different skills, and investors will come knocking.

Grw AI is the latest AI-led Kiwi startup to attract international investor interest and after raising $2.4 million round of pre-seed funding in November, its three founders will soon be off to San Francisco.

The business to business startup, which launched publicly in April 2024, is using AI to help make 1:1 performance coaching scalable, targeting the huge B2B sales industry and particularly focusing on the United States with its alleged 5.7 million plus sales executives.

“There are tens of millions of sales people in the world, and to have their own AI performance coach will allow them to be their best selves,” says Grw AI co-founder and Co-CEO, Alex McNaughten.

According to market research company Forrester, just 47% of sales professionals hit their sales quota each year while RepVue measures it at 42%.

Finding international investors from the early days

In September, the three co-founders went to San Francisco for an industry conference and to meet investors.

“We met one of our investors while playing poker at an event in San Francisco and he committed over $400,000 a few days later. Another investor was a new contact we arranged to meet at a coffee shop who invested $80,000 after a 40 minute conversation and then introduced us to the Chief Revenue Officer of Slack,“ says Alex.

Building a team with complementary skills

What these investors liked about Grw AI were the combined skills of the three co-founders.

Co-CEO, Alistair McLeay did research at Cambridge University two years ago on large language models and saw an opportunity to scale coaching to millions. Prior to this, Alistair had been a published machine learning researcher and had built and sold a software company.

Alex was working in sales coaching and sales leadership, the entrepreneur founding the B2B sales coaching company, Apprento. He also had excellent links with top sales coaches and business leaders in the States as host of the RevUp Sales Podcast.

The third co-founder and CTO, Dan Ash, has led product teams and software engineering teams around the world and is incredibly talented at solving complex problems with software, says Alex.

The Grw AI business model

The Grw AI business model is a B2B SaaS subscription and the company’s 20 customers so far include NZ-founded vet practice management software company, ezyVet in the US and New Zealand, TradeWindow and property insights data company, Relab.

Companies work with Grw AI’s Taylor, a coach trained and tailored to each individual and organisation. Taylor helps sales people prepare for meetings, to debrief or get feedback on a sales opportunity and to handle customer objections.

“The key thing the Grw AI coach can do that the human cannot, is be available any time,” says Alistair.

Bringing investors with you

Meanwhile, as well as Taylor, the company is working with top sales coaches in the US who have become major advocates of the Grw AI brand, investing and distributing it.

“We’ve digitised a number of the world’s top sales coaches on the platform - and it dramatically enhances what they can offer in the market. It can give them super powers, allowing them to scale their impact to millions,” says Alex.

As the three Grw AI co-founders anticipate a move to a San Francisco HQ in the New Year, they plan to expand the product development team in New Zealand.

“While we focused on the US market for fundraising, we are really excited to be using the funds to build a world class engineering organisation in New Zealand,” says Alistair.

“We want to send a message to fellow Kiwi founders that it’s absolutely possible to head straight to the US. There is so much opportunity, investment terms are more founder friendly and the Americans are extremely supportive of Kiwis. Just get over there,” says CTO Dan Ash.

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