Lusha, an Israeli startup developing a crowdsourced data platform for B2B sales teams, announced it closed $40 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by Providence Strategic Growth. This marks the company’s first steps in the fundraising waters after operating for the past 5 years as a Bootstrap.

Critical data for salespeople

Lusha developed a cloud-based platform that enables salespeople to share accurate contact and company information with each other, providing sales professionals with vital insights on the customers they target. Lusha also recommends relevant prospects and organizations, eliminating cumbersome research and allowing salespeople to focus on what they do best - sell.

Salespeople can utilize Lusha’s browser extension, which synchronizes with CRMs and social media platforms,  to receive insight in real-time to improve the sales process, and hopefully, tip it into their favor. The Israeli startup also offers an API channel, through which customers can receive their required data.

"Today, sales professionals only spend a fraction of their time actually selling due to limited access to data and the need for research. Our community approach is changing this reality, equipping salespeople with the information they need to reach the right person and know when to prioritize outreach," said CEO and co-founder Yoni Tserruya.

Lusha expresses pride in their global community. The company explained that users continuously verify the data, in order to keep them updated over time - therefore securing high accuracy. Lusha's community has already expanded to over 520,000 sales professionals and 167,000 sales organizations. From sole-traders to mid-sized organizations like Aircall and Zendesk, to Fortune 500 companies including Google and Dropbox, salespeople working across all industries and of all sizes are benefiting from Lusha's data community, according to the company.

Lusha was founded in 2016 by Assaf Eisenstein and Yoni Tserruya and is headquartered in Tel Aviv. The company noted that it intends to continue grow its sales community and expand on the current platform.

"In an industry dominated by lengthy sales cycles, organizational buy-in and yearly contracts costing tens-of-thousands of dollars, Lusha's unique approach offers salespeople a much-needed alternative," said Assaf Eisenstein, Co-Founder & President of Lusha. "Salespeople need instant results and access to affordable data. Lusha's simplicity and variety of packages allow them to instantly use Lusha - without the need for company approval or significant investment. We are excited to use the funds raised to further develop technology that makes data available for all salespeople and to take a step closer to our goal of turning Lusha into B2Bs largest data-sharing community."