We raised $10.3M to build what comes after CRM

If you've been following us, giving us feedback, or running your team on Zero during the beta: thank you. You've helped us get here.

I want to share why Santtu and I started Zero, what we're seeing with customers, and what we're working towards.

Why we started Zero

Before Zero, I co-founded Smartly.io. Santtu led its go-to-market across five markets. Together, we helped scale it to $100M in annual recurring revenue.

We know how much work goes into building a commercial team. Finding the right people to talk to. Understanding what they need. Following up. Making sure the customer gets what they came for, and being there when their needs change.

We also know how much of the week disappears into maintaining the software around that work. Updating records, copying information between tools, chasing people for the latest status. As the team grows, so does the work of keeping everyone on the same page.

AI has made it much easier to build products. Building a business around them still takes an enormous amount of effort. We started Zero because we think software should take on much more of that effort.

The customer relationship should stay together

Think about what happens after a good sales conversation. You've learned why someone is looking, what matters to them, who else needs to be involved, and what you agreed to do next. That context should help with every conversation that follows.

It should also stay with the customer after they sign. The person helping them get started should know what they were promised. The person preparing for a renewal should know whether they've got the value they expected.

We're building Zero around that whole relationship. Prospecting, sales, and customer success share the same context, so you can pick up where the last conversation left off.

Agents do the work around it: build prospect lists, keep records up to date, prepare follow-ups, and watch for changes in customer health. You stay in control of what reaches a customer. The aim is for a small team to handle more relationships well, without adding the same amount of admin every time the business grows.

That's what we mean by building what comes after CRM.

What we're seeing so far

Our private beta customers have already been replacing their CRM and separate prospecting, outreach, and customer health tools with Zero.

Teamspective reports closing twice as much new business since switching. Watchdog cut its sales cycle from 60 days to 30, including enterprise deals. Emfas says Zero saves the team a full workday each week.

Those are the kinds of results we're building for: time back, fewer things falling through the cracks, and more room to spend with customers.

There's plenty more to build. We're grateful to the teams using Zero while we build it, and we want to keep learning from the work they do every day.

The people backing us

Primary Venture Partners led the round, joined by Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens, and founders of Lovable, Supercell, Langdock, Silo AI, and Depict. They include Fabian Hedin, Ilkka Paananen, and Peter Sarlin.

They join our earlier backers, including 20VC, which led our pre-seed, PostHog co-founder James Hawkins, and operator funds backed by executives from Spotify, Wolt, Shopify, Dropbox, Meta, and OpenAI.

It's one of the largest seed rounds a Finnish tech company has raised. We're grateful for the trust, and for the chance to keep building Zero with people who understand what it takes to build and grow a company.

Come try it

Zero is now open to everyone, with a 14-day free trial and AI-assisted migration from the tools you already use.

If you're spending too much time keeping your CRM up to date, give it a try. We'd love to hear what works for you, what gets in the way, and what you wish it could do next.

Thank you to our team, our customers, and everyone who's backed us so far. We're excited to put Zero in more people's hands.