Freckle Raises $1.9M to Build the Clay-Alternative for Non-Technical Users

Today, I’m delighted to announce we’ve raised a $1.9M pre-seed to accelerate building Freckle, the data enrichment and research platform for non-technical users.

Since releasing our beta 5-weeks ago, we have onboarded 232 customers to Freckle. They have enriched and run AI-research prompts on everything from lead lists, event attendees, candidate lists, investors, and founders.

The use-cases and creativity of our users has been amazing to witness, and I’m excited to share with you all what we’re building and why we exist.

And if you haven’t tried Freckle yet, we’d love to give you a personalized 1:1 onboarding. Join our waitlist here to get early access.

Our thesis: LLMs have unlocked exponential value in B2B data

It’s undeniable that AI has created an inflection point in B2B data. But it’s not how most of us envisaged it would play out when ChatGPT was first released.

Prior to LLMs, companies have relied on incomplete or messy B2B datasets. Whether it's been in sales, marketing, investing or talent acquisition roles, folks have had to make do with relying on basic data attributes from the same core databases. Incomplete coverage and inaccurate data has led to companies stitching together different datasets, or engaging offshore virtual assistants and junior team members to fill in the gaps on the data they really care about. The data that enables you to truly know if a person or company is a good fit for your product or service.

I experienced this pain point first hand when founding my first company Everproof, and most recently at Skedulo where I was Chief of Staff. Skedulo is a field service management software, so our sales team needed to know if a prospect had a field workforce. This wasn’t an attribute ZoomInfo captured, so we would either have our SDRs review each site to check if they were a fit, or accept the fact that ~60% of companies on our list weren’t a fit. We also tried offshore virtual assistants for a while, but the quality just wasn’t there. It was a lose-lose situation.

AI has changed that in three fundamental ways:

1. AI research agents are now possible: By combining LLMs and web scrapers, we are now able to easily acquire data points on companies that have previously been impossible, or not economically viable, to gather. Want to know if a company has a PLG motion? Or if they mention AWS on their website? This is all possible to now automate at a fraction of the cost of a virtual assistant.
   
   
2. Niche data providers have emerged in mass: With the cost of data acquisition dropping significantly, hundreds of niche data enrichment providers have been created in the last 12-months servicing the long tail of unique data points that companies are looking to acquire. These providers are API-first companies, intending for their data to be used alongside other data providers to address the coverage issues of traditional B2B datasets.
   
   
3. Transition away from high volume outreach: AI has increased the noise in almost all B2B activities. Automated outreach has flooded our inboxes and new deliverability changes have meant you can no longer send huge volumes of emails without risking your domain health or establishing a complex deliverability infrastructure. This is driving a greater need to ensure that you’re reaching out to the right person with the right message. Whilst AI was the catalyst for this, it has also unlocked the solution to taking fewer, higher quality shots on target.

Enter Freckle: The data enrichment and research platform for non-technical users

Freckle combines AI-research and data enrichment providers into one easy-to-use platform. Whether it’s for a list of leads, investors, event attendees, or candidates, Freckle makes it easy to build and enrich your data to create hyper-targeted lists.

Similar to Miro or Canva, Freckle has a rich template library that helps users leverage AI and third-party data integrations to seamlessly perform key enrichments, like finding people’s LinkedIn URLs and emails, or automating specific research tasks on companies.

This breaks down the intimidation of a blank page into an experience that anyone can activate on and get to value quickly. An experience where you start with pre-built prompts that you can easily customize, and data providers that are pre-selected for you based on what you want to achieve.

We are building Freckle for non-technical users. Similar to how Hubspot is to Salesforce in CRM, Freckle is to Clay in data enrichment. We are for users who index on usability over configurability. Our users are tech-native but not technical, a profile that’s surprisingly common across many industries and roles today.

Whether you’re a head of platform for a VC, a community manager for a startup, a talent acquisition specialist, a financial broker, an account executive or growth marketer, Freckle is for you.

We’re also clear on what we’re not, which is where Clay comes in. If you are highly technical and have advanced workflow logic you need to build around the data, then Clay will be a better product for you. We greatly admire what Clay has built and the power of their platform is its configurability.

Our next chapter

I couldn’t be more excited about what we’re building next. Over the coming months we’ll be releasing:

• Table templates: Entire table templates with pre-mapped enrichments and prompts for high value use-cases and personas.
• Meta-prompting: Enabling you to create AI columns and prompts with natural language inputs.
• Lookalike lists: Building lists of similar people and companies based on just a person’s LinkedIn URL or company domain.

And this is just the beginning. We are on a mission to bring all the world’s B2B data sources together and make them accessible to you through Freckle.

To all of our customers, investors, and importantly to my team, thank you for being a part of Freckle’s journey. Here’s to building a wonderful company together.

If you haven’t tried Freckle yet, we’d love to give you a personalized 1:1 onboarding. Join our waitlist here and we’ll get you early access shortly.

Nathan

I want to personally thank all of our investors who have backed Freckle on our journey to date. This round was led by Asymmetric Capital Partners, with participation from Brenteca Investments, Mintaka VC, CoVentures, Polaris Ventures. We also had some amazing strategic angels invest as part of this round, including execs and founders from Carta, Klaviyo, Culture Amp, Skedulo and many other tech companies I greatly admire. I’m so pumped to continue learning from you all and feel privileged to have you supporting us on the journey.