2022 has just concluded, and leading tech startups are starting to share their numbers. It has been a difficult year in tech, as many public companies have missed their targets alongside the market crash that’s been taking place for three quarters now.
Walnut is one buzzy startup in the sales space that has actually taken off during the recession, with a 6X increase in ARR (annual recurring revenue), coming just 1 year after TechCrunch has announced Walnut’s ARR growth to be at 700% at the end of 2021.
“Managing the way tech companies sell better by easily and efficiently showcasing their products,” tells Yoav Vilner, CEO of Walnut, “is proving to be a strong value proposition even during a recession.”
Walnut, the company behind the new tech category often referred to as ‘interactive product demos,’ emerged only 2 years ago with a 700-long waitlist and $56M in funding from investors such as Felicis, NFX, and executives ranging from SalesForce to Google and Wix.
It has exclusively shared with Ritz Herald a few of its 2022 data points. Their data shows that Walnut saved one working day a week for demo creators; a Walnut demo was viewed every 1 minute, and the total views of Walnut videos were 1.5 million.
A streak of product launches and accolades
In 2022, Walnut launched two major new product updates: Walnut For Teams and Walnut Beyond Demos. Walnut For Teams brought new collaboration to “let people sell better, together,” while Walnut Beyond Demos focused on giving customer-facing teams access to high levels of data that can inform their tailored product demonstrations.
Walnut’s commercial success and product releases earned them a streak of accolades, including “Top Workplaces” by Duns & Bradstreet, “Top 10 Growth Startups in TLV”, “Top 10 Promising Startups”, and dozens more. Moreover, Walnut has also been rated ”Product of the Day” by Product Hunt.
“One award, in particular, caught us by surprise,” tells us Vilner. “We started getting text messages about how LinkedIn has rated us the #1 growing startup in Tel-Aviv, based on their data of team strength and experience, financial success, company growth, brand recognition, and more factors. We were invited to their HQ to collect the actual award and couldn’t have been more humbled to share that top 15 list alongside key players such as Wiz, Fireblocks, or Artlist.”
And after onboarding hundreds of new clients, some of them Fortune 500 companies, and building a team of over 100+ employees, including new VP of R&D, Eyal Erez, who previously held the title of Director of Engineering at Spotify, alongside other roles at Facebook and Waze, Walnut became the go-to choice for many businesses looking to streamline their sales processes.
One Global Movement
Challenging the status quo can give startups an advantage over established companies, enabling them to gain market share, create new customer segments, and solidify themselves as industry leaders.
Walnut has given birth to the #WeAreProspects campaign, a movement that aims to help B2B organizations better understand the painful SaaS buying experience, but mainly to help prospects have better sales experiences.
The campaign videos went viral on LinkedIn, with millions of views, which were later broadcast at leading conferences such as SaaStr, or Linkedin’s annual marketing conference in San Francisco.
As the campaign pointed out, SaaS sales cycles are far too slow (taking an average of 83 days), while most funnels are seller-centric and lack product-led engagement. To help solve these issues, the urgency to bring together the right partners, technologies, and user experience can accelerate the process and unlock greater value for customers is paramount.
The press has even compared its success to one sales movement from 20 years ago, one “End of Software” movement.
“2023 is going to be another challenging year for tech companies,” says Vilner, “and we hope to continue seeing the value we provide to our customers in terms of positive ROI on their sales teams’ effort and time.”
