Mikita Mikado, CEO of PandaDoc, a sales content automation software company, announced plans that would further enhance the world’s leading CRM Systems by developing more document automation tools that add efficiency and speed deal closures. These CRM Systems include Salesforce, Base, Zoho, Pipedrive, Pipeliner CRM and Insightly, as well as other products like Zendesk, Box, and OneDrive. With the assistance of a $5 million Series A round of funding by the likes of Altos Ventures, TMT Investments, and others, PandaDoc will add more CRM systems to its integration family as well as put additional resources into its sales and marketing effort, which to date has focused solely on website leads and referrals.
PandaDoc provides document automation solutions for sales teams by extending the capabilities of CRM systems they already use. This provides a sales team with numerous features, such as professional standardized document templates for sales collateral that includes quotes, proposals, business plans and invoices. Additionally, PandaDoc allows the sales team to offer electronic signatures and conduct various types of document analytics. This has resulted in improved sales documents that present a more professional and consistent image as well as faster deal closures.
PandaDoc participates in many market segments, such as electronic signing, CPQ, and sales enablement, which are projected to grow into the billions of dollars. While there are many other players in the space, including Apttus, Clearslide, and Docusign, which have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, PandaDoc has proven it can create a viable and highly sought-after business solution with considerably less funding.
Since Mikado and his co-founder, Serge Barysiuk, started the company in 2010, the idea for their automation solution wasn’t fully developed until the summer of 2013. PandaDoc was launched in January 2014 as a free and premium web platform. They have proven that it is possible to consolidate numerous “clunky” software products, including creation, delivery, management of sales collateral, and document signing, into one efficient and scalable platform. As Mikado noted, “Making things easier for sales reps is our goal, helping companies look more professional with the documents reps send to clients while tracking the results. We make sales automation possible!”
Since then, the company has helped nearly 5,000 businesses remove time-intensive and many times monotonous tasks from the assignment list of their sales teams. Instead, they can focus on real-time insights into their prospects’ activity and proactively address their issues and concerns. A mobile app is also now available for iPhones and Android devices.
With 35 employees and offices in San Francisco and Europe, Mikado and his team are looking forward to the opportunities they have to grow further with this latest round of funding. As Ho Nam, General Partner at Altos Ventures, stated in explaining why they decided to invest, “We believe that enterprise products built for the end users are the ultimate winners. The PandaDoc team definitely has the product genome to make that happen.”
