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Abhijit Mitra. (Outreach Photo)
Sales automation software company Outreach launched more than a decade ago, has raised nearly $500 million, sells to more than 6,000 customers, and employs close to 700 people.
But as new CEO Abhijit Mitra lays the groundwork for the company’s future, it’s Day 1.
“We need to think of ourselves as entrepreneurs,” he said. “We’re just getting started.”
Mitra was named CEO in September, taking over for co-founder and longtime leader Manny Medina, who remains with the company as executive chairman of the board.
Mitra is a self-described technologist who joined Outreach a little more than a year ago after more than two decades in various product leadership roles at Oracle, SAP, ServiceNow, and Commure.
He takes the reins at a company that established itself as a leader in “sales engagement,” or helping salespeople as they generate a pipeline and connect with customers. Outreach grew rapidly during the pandemic, but has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few years amid a broader slowdown in tech.
That slowdown led to a contraction in the number of salespeople, impacting companies such as Outreach, Mitra said.
“This is the time where we need to really tighten our screws, so to speak, and become more efficient at what we do,” he said.
Outreach previously held the No. 1 spot on the GeekWire 200, our list of privately held startups in the Pacific Northwest, but recently dropped amid its cost-cutting measures.
Mitra, who was hired last year as president of product and technology, sees a convergence of the sales execution, revenue intelligence, and customer relationship management (CRM) markets. And he believes Outreach is well-positioned to capture that larger combined market by offering a wider breadth of sales-related products in areas such as forecasting and retention.
“I am very bullish on where I think this company can go,” he said.
Outreach this week rolled out new AI “prospecting agents” designed to handle research and prospecting tasks autonomously.
Mitra doesn’t believe AI will completely replace the work of salespeople — human-to-human interaction won’t go away, he said — but the CEO does see it augmenting their work by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks.
“We say, make every rep your best rep,” Mitra said. “So if the AI is able to now augment me and make me a better seller, a better person, a better human being — that’s actually meaningful.”
Outreach faces fierce competition from companies that are integrating AI in various ways. A number of newer “AI sales rep” startups are gaining traction, while larger incumbents such as Salesforce and Hubspot are releasing their own AI tools.
Mitra, who is based in the Bay Area, said he’s met with more than 60 customers over the past three months to gather intel on what they like and want.
“With the advent of AI, a lot of new opportunities are propping up for all of us,” Mitra said. “I want to make the most of that.”
