The founders of Legion Analytics say they’re offering a better way for salespeople to find new customers.
The startup is part of Y Combinator’s new fellowship system, an eight-week program for “very, very early” stage companies who receive a $12,000 grant and fly in for office hours and mentorship.
What’s wrong with the current lead generation process? CTO Sinan Ozdemir said that it usually involves “data dumps” where “20 to 40 percent of the information might be inaccurate or irrelevant.”
So Legion Analytics doesn’t just provide salespeople with a big list of contact information. Instead, it sends them with two, five or 10 potential leads (depending on the plan) each morning. Those leads are curated based on your company and your interests, then they’re further tailored over time as you give a thumbs down or thumbs up, Pandora-style, to each one.
Behind the scenes, Legion Analytics says it curates these leads with a combination of algorithm and “in-house experts.” A lot of this is based on people’s job titles — CEO Jamasen Rodriguez said the system works fine with “legacy job titles” but “really shines” when it comes to newer titles like “sales hacker,” because it understands how various job titles can actually mean the same thing.
You can also be more specific with your filters, like saying you want to connect with a “VP of sales at companies with over $5M in funding in San Francisco that use Mixpanel on their website where the VP of sales is between 25-32 years of age.”
“We’ve used at least 10 lead generation services for our team,” said Brian Trautschold of Y Combinator-backed sales startup Ambition in an emailed statement. “Most work OK, but none are fantastic. I started using Legion two months ago and I can’t imagine going back. Opening my email with new leads every morning is so simple, fits perfectly into my workflow and makes my life so much easier.”
Rodriguez and Ozdemir met at Johns Hopkins Unviersity, where Rodriguez was a student and Ozdemir was a lecturer. They became interested, Ozdemir said, in the quetion of, “How do we use people’s online data to really get to know them as people?” As they worked, they realized this could be a big help to salespeople.
The pair had already moved out to San Francisco before hearing about the YC Fellowship program, which doesn’t require startups to move to the Bay Area. Eventually, they’re hoping to expand into other areas of the sales process.
“We’ve got that culture of lead gen analytics, of making sure customers get the best information and the best experience,” Rodriguez said. “That experience could flood over to managing your mail drip campaigns [and more]. We want to own that whole process.”
Oh, and in case you were wondering: Yes, it’s a punny name based on the similarity between “lead gen” and “legion.”