Octolane AI: The Self-Driving CRM Taking Aim at Salesforce ⚡🤖

(6 minutes)

Hey 👋, this is the Kitsune VC Newsletter: A subset of Today in AI, where we vest a $10 million early stage fund over the next 2 years.

We make “investments” every few weeks into early stage startups we think will make it big in hopes to beat the returns of big funds like Sequoia and a16z. 💸

Today we are talking about a company that is first to a space that will soon replace the $80B industry. 📉

The Problem: CRMs Steal More Time Than They Give 🕰️

“Pipeline solves all problems” - my favourite SDR from Deel.

Well I just started building up my own pipeline and turns out 32% of reps lose 1+ hour daily to manual CRM input, ~25 hours every month. 😓

That’s family dinners missed, quotas slipped and doomscrolling time missed. And traditional CRMs respond with… more fields. 🤦‍♂️

This made me realise how big of a timesave a new AI-native CRM could be. One where it updates the entire pipeline and the SDRs can focus on … sales  🎯

Then the hunt began 🔍, I immediately started looking through any and all CRMs that would solve the problem.

The Solution: Octolane’s Self-Driving CRM 🚗💨

Octolane flips the script by:

1. Auto-writing follow-up emails, all drafted before reps even log in. ✍️📧
   

2. Auto-updating calls, emails and meetings parsed by LLMs to refresh every contact field in real time. 🤖🔄
   

3. Auto-prioritizing through an AI “day plan” that surfaces the next best action on each deal. 📅⚡

This is an interesting solution in a space where AI SDRs are all the rage. Rather than mindlessly backing another end to end automation tool where human touch is quite the necessity, I really think AI - augmented processes is the future for the 10x SDR. 🔥🤝

Traction & Tech ✅

The numbers back the thesis — Octolane is scaling like a 🚀 rocket ship in a market desperate for disruption.

They've onboarded 200 paying customers in their first quarter post-launch, with customers switching from legacy giants like Salesforce 🏢 and HubSpot. ➡️🚀

Even more impressive — 5,000 companies are sitting on their waitlist, signaling massive pent-up demand ⏳ for an AI-first CRM solution 📈.

Octolane has 2 pending patent applications covering their proprietary crawler network and AI action engine algorithms. This isn't just another software wrapper; they're building genuine IP moats 🛡️ around their core automation technology 💡.

Founders 👥

The founding duo embodies the classic Silicon Valley success story💪, founded and exited (relatively) smaller exits and now that they have room to breathe, they are going all in! 

One Chowdhury (CEO, 23) dropped out of Duke University after visiting San Francisco and realizing "everyone hated using Salesforce" 👎. His insight: "If something sucks that badly and still has the tallest building in the city 🏢, there's opportunity". 

In a world where distribution feels like the only MOAT, his social media presence as "Coffee with One" has become a magnet 🧲 for customers. Before Octolane, he built search analytics at Mintlify (YC W22) and had a prior startup acquired during his freshman year. 

Md Abdul Halim Rafi (CTO) brings the technical firepower. He co-founded and scaled Mainly Coding to 300,000 monthly users and 6,000 registered users before its acquisition by Shikho 🎓 (an EdTech company) in 2022. 👨‍💻

All this is cool, but what’s even better is where they started from:

The 2 were best friends since high school and taught themselves to code by watching YouTube tutorials. They moved from Bangladesh to San Francisco and hustled their way to build something monumental. 

Investment Rationale 💭

Another exciting startup, super early stage with no public facing product, but a large round, exceptional founders and a huge TAM. 

Interestingly (as many VCs do), I think I have indexed on a few start-ups that win purely by power law 📊 . 

Scrunch AI and Octolane AI are attacking such big markets (with a good team and traction) that they became no-brainer💡investments. 

For the next few investments, I want to try to catch startups outside the YC path, that haven’t raised insane rounds and maybe aim for a 10% hold. Founders that are not finding backing that easily …

Deal Structure 💰

Octolane just closed an oversubscribed $2.6M seed 💵 at an estimated $15M post-money . Backers include Brian Shin (early HubSpot), Cindy Bi (CapitalX), Kulveer Taggar, YC, Basis Set and General Catalyst Apex.

We’re “committing” $500k for ~3.33% 🤝 alongside the round. 

- Preet

Partner @ Kitsune VC

Just to clarify once more, none of the investments we make as part of Kitsune VC are real - we’re only simulating what investments we’d make if we operated such a fund. 

This is NOT financial advice. ⚠️

Wail’s view🥊

🗣️ The AI-native CRM space is noisy right now. 

💰Clay just hit a $3B valuation, Attio has processed over 200 million customer records, Monday.com (Worth ~$15B) has transitioned to becoming AI-native. 

Everyone’s racing to bolt GPT on top of Salesforce workflows; but what makes Octolane interesting to me is that it didn’t start with the CRM. 

💨It started with the workflow. Specifically: how do you make the SDR 10x faster?

That’s a different question than “how do you replace Salesforce?” And a better one.

Where others generate leads, Octolane generates actions:

✅It doesn’t just log a meeting - it recommends the next one.
✅It doesn’t just scrape data - it writes the follow-up.
✅It doesn’t just notify you - it guides your entire day.

That’s not just automation. That’s decision-layer infrastructure. And that’s where real AI defensibility & a clear MOAT comes in.

🤑200 paying customers in 90 days at ~$200/month each is already $40k in MRR. Only the first 1,000 customers will get in at $200/month, but after that it’ll jump to $1000/month.

If Octolane closes just 10% of their 5,000 on the waitlist post-first 1,000 customers, that’s $500k in MRR added…

🇧🇩The founders seem smart and super capable having exited previous startups and learned how to code via Youtube from Bangladesh.

This is exactly the kind of startup Kitsune was designed to back:

💎Massive market (CRM is an $80B+ category)

🤖AI-native rethink of a stale industry

📈Early traction & real velocity

Before you go 👋 

Thank you for reading.

So far we’ve invested in 6 startups and have vested $2.75 million of our $10 million fund.

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