Bridging the Gap: Minoa SaaS Sales Platform Addresses the Rising Demand for Remote Collaboration

 The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted various aspects of business, including the way software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies sell their products. With social distancing measures in place, in-person meetings were replaced by virtual platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Surprisingly, both vendors and buyers found that virtual meetings could be productive, leading to the adoption of remote practices even as COVID restrictions ease.

Recognizing the gap in existing sales tools for online meetings, Richard Einhorn and Max Elster founded Minoa in 2022 to cater to the growing trend of remote B2B sales. Minoa is a sales platform designed to help SaaS vendors and their customers track the lifecycle of a deal asynchronously. It offers tools for value management, quoting, pricing, and more.

What sets Minoa apart from other tools is its focus on including customers in the sales platform, unlike many incumbents that primarily serve vendors. As companies incorporate more specialized SaaS services into their tech stacks, the number of decision-makers involved in the procurement process increases. Minoa facilitates the exchange of information between vendors and customers, allowing all stakeholders to collaborate effectively. For example, the platform features an ROI calculator for buyers to assess the return on investment of a product, a task typically handled through spreadsheets or email exchanges during in-person meetings.

While Salesforce is a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool, Minoa addresses the issue of deals taking too long to close by enabling better collaboration between vendors and customers. By providing transparency on the deal's progress, shared documents, and stages, Minoa complements CRM systems like Salesforce.

Although it is too early to determine if the shift to remote sales practices will be permanent, Minoa has already secured investor support. The company recently raised $2.7 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round. Leading the round was 468 Capital, founded by Florian Leibert, the founder of Mesosphere. Other institutional investors included Mischief (founded by Zach Perret, the founder of Plaid), AirAngels, Alumni Ventures, and Fidi Ventures. Notable angel investors in the round included Mathilde Collin (founder of Front), Lenny Rachitsky (podcast host), and Russ Heddleston (founder of DocSend).

While Minoa has not disclosed customer size or growth rates due to its early stage, the company leverages its investor network for outreach to prospective clients as part of its customer acquisition strategy. The founders are also in the process of relocating from Europe to San Francisco to be closer to the region's abundance of B2B SaaS companies and venture capital.