Elastic is a “sales-as-a-service” platform that provides both software and manpower that lets startups outsource their sales functions on demand. Efti sums it up thusly:
“We have a tech component and a sales component. We’ve built a sales communication platform that’s sort of our secret sauce, and that’s what our sales people use. The next part is the services business, where we let startups to essentially rent sales people in the cloud.”
Elastic has been received pretty well. “We’ve closed more than 300 deals for 10 different startups,” Efti said, noting that this has meant “millions” in dollars in top-line new sales for its clients. The team has grown from its 3 co-founders to a staff of 15, equally divided between “hackers” who build the company’s software platform and “hustlers” who help with the human-powered sales aspect. The headcount growth has been purely from Elastic’s own reinvested revenues (it takes a commission on the sales it helps companies generate) and Efti is looking to double the staff over the coming months.
