- The startup Spara is coming out of stealth to make inbound sales more efficient with AI agents.
- Its cofounders spent months interviewing leading voices in the field to pick an idea for Spara.
- Spara CEO David Walker sold his last startup to luxury real estate brokerage The Agency.
An AI startup is coming out of stealth with $15 million in seed funding to make inbound sales more efficient.
Cofounded by CEO David Walker and CTO Zander Pease, Spara — short for sales performance and revenue acceleration — builds conversational AI voice, chat, and email agents for sales teams.
New York City-based Spara greets prospects, qualifies leads, fields questions, and books meetings — automating the work of sales teams. It trains AI models for mid-market and large business clients based on their specific sales processes and brand voices.
Sales stalwarts and startups are increasingly using AI in their field. Spara focuses on inbound sales, when a potential client has already sought out a company.
"Outbound is dead and AI is killing it," said Walker, adding that the tech has automated cold outreach to the point of saturation.
Walker formerly cofounded and sold real estate startup Triplemint to luxury brokerage The Agency, and he still serves on the board.
"I'm not meant to be an armchair executive; I'm meant to be a builder," he said.
As for Pease, he served as senior director of product at Hyperscience AI and cofounder of Nomad Health.
Spara's cofounders refused to pick an idea for six months
Walker and Pease connected in 2023 through a mutual friend, knowing they wanted to start a company, although they didn't know what yet. They "refused to pick an idea for six months," Walker said, opting to conduct informational interviews with "really smart people" in the field.
"We talked to over 200 sales leaders and tried to treat them like user interviews," Pease said. "What are the biggest pain points you have? Where do you think AI is going to change sales?"
These sales leaders kept coming back to the idea that companies will no longer be constrained by human sales teams because of AI.
Spara officially launched in 2024, and many of its investors came from those initial conversations.
The $15 million in funding includes a simple agreement for future equity in February 2024 led by Inspired Capital and a seed in July 2024 led by Radical Ventures.
Other participants included XYZ Ventures, FJ Labs, Remarkable Ventures, and angels like Anthropic's head of revenue Kate Jensen and OpenAI's head of strategic accounts James Dyett.
Spara will use the funds for research, development, sales, and marketing, Walker said. Spara has 16 employees — roughly two-thirds in engineering and the rest in sales.
Customers include banking platform Rho, restaurant software company MarketMan, cybersecurity training firm Jericho Security, and rich-text editor TinyMCE.
