Sales knowledge automation platform 1up gets a third of its customer leads from memes

When George Avetisov was the founder and CEO of a cybersecurity startup HYPRspent a lot of time in the trenches with the company’s sales team. He quickly realized that as good as his sales team was, they were constantly pulling in other departments to answer customer questions or fill out technical questionnaires.

“They don’t know the answers to most of the questions they’re being asked,” Avetisov told TechCrunch. “They should ask the product person and involve a sales engineer. It’s hard work and these people are brilliant, for example I’ve worked with some amazing sales reps, but the problem with sales is that there’s no easy way to automate their knowledge.”

Avetisov (pictured above center) decided that this would be the next challenge he would tackle. He left HYPR in 2021 and took a brief hiatus from startups to play and beat the Elden Ring video game; Avetisov said he wanted a little break before being consumed by another startup. He launched his new company, 1 upin 2022.

1up is an AI-powered knowledge automation platform for sales teams that pull data from internal company data sources and databases. Sales professionals can turn to 1up to find answers to their product or technical questions, fulfill requests for proposals, and also use it to fill out technical questionnaires.

The company went public in January 2024 and has since amassed nearly 100 customers, ranging from startups to large enterprise customers including WalkMe and Deliveroo. The company’s unusual marketing strategy: managed to get a non-trivial portion of these customers through memes.

“We run one of the largest sales meme libraries in the community and get millions of impressions on LinkedIn,” Avetisov said. “People only follow us from our memes. I know it’s a little weird, but one out of every three of our hosts comes from a meme.”

Now the company is announcing a $5 million funding round led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from the likes of RRE Ventures, 8-Bit Capital and Friendster founder Jonathan Adams. Original general partner Kobie Fuller is the lead investor and will serve on the company’s board of directors.

Fuller told TechCrunch that he received a cold email from Avetisov a few days after one of his portfolio companies mentioned that 1up might fit Fuller’s investment thesis on how artificial intelligence will change the way the enterprise approaches knowledge. When talking to Avetisova about this thesis, Fuller said they were speaking the same language.

“So much of how we make investment decisions revolves around the founder, and as a second-time founder, George saw the challenge and the pain first-hand,” Fuller said. “When we talk to George, he can get into the mansion at any level or depth that you don’t always see with CEOs. You can tell he’s in command of his mission by having 1 tattoo on the inside of his wrist. He really, really has; he’s incredibly skinny.”

Since its release ChatGPT In 2022, AI startups for sales departments have exploded, especially when it comes to building AI tools that help customers generate sales leads and engage with customers. Companies looking to provide knowledge centers for businesses emerging before 2022 have also started to gain momentum.

Avetisov does not prevent it. He said 1up provides a service so different from other AI sales lead generators that he doesn’t think 1up is competing for the same line of business on the company’s budget. He believes companies don’t need all-encompassing knowledge centers, but 1up’s approach is different because it addresses a specific problem.

“When you talk to an enterprise, knowledge management is not a budget item. This is not a problem of fire on hair,” Avetisov said. “Our philosophy on this is that for knowledge automation to succeed and grow into a billion-dollar company or industry, it needs to be laser-focused on the individual and the department.”

The next steps for 1up, now that it has raised this latest funding, is to expand its sales team. There will also be some feature improvements, though Avetisov wasn’t ready to share details about those just yet.

“Sales teams are very bad,” said Avetisov. “They have one of the toughest jobs in the company and the toolkit is terrible. They have a lot of tools for intelligence and CRMs and all that. But when it comes to knowledge management, they are completely neglected. So here is our warm welcome. This is our laser focus.”