Designmynight founders raise £5m for new tech venture
The founders of hospitality booking platform Designmynight have raised $6.35m (£4.9m) for their new tech venture.
Nick Telson-Sillett and Andrew Webster, who scaled Designmynight and sold it for £25m in 2017, have raised the capital for new digital sales platform Trumpet, alongside co-founder and chief executive Rory Sadler.
The seed funding round led by London-based AlbionVC, which manages around $1bn (£778m) of venture funds, also includes previous investors Lightbird Ventures, Anamcara Capital and Triple Point Ventures.
Founded in 2021, Trumpet aims to make B2B sales easier by creating a simple online space where all deal details are organised, helping sales teams connect with buyers and close deals more smoothly, even when they aren’t directly involved.
Sadler, formerly sales lead at software company Hotjar, said: “Companies are continuing to tighten their belts because of the economic climate and that means sales teams need to change how they fundamentally approach selling.
“We’re helping companies collaborate and centralise their buyer journey, increasing their sales efficiency and velocity. Our proprietary revenue intelligence signals are also helping revenue leaders forecast and understand their deal pipeline like never before,” he added.
The new funding will allow Trumpet to integrate artificial intelligence into its platform and expand in the US, where 20 per cent of its customer base now comes from. The company currently has no marketing or teams based there.
Paul Lehair, investment director at AlbionVC, said: “Rory, Nick and Andrew have built one of the most exciting B2B platforms we have seen recently. Trumpet is elegantly designed and extremely easy to use and it’s already proving its effectiveness with global teams.
“There is so much potential for Pods to not only own the conversations between buyers and sellers but also other areas of B2B communications and I’m looking forward to working with the team as they expand and grow.”
So far Trumpet has over 10,000 users and more than 250 paying customers, including Cognism, OpenTable, Sky Media and Crossbeam.