Check out the pitch deck that this ex-Accenture consultant used to raise $5 million in seed funding for his AI-powered startup

• Three-year-old Databook uses AI to deliver customer intelligence services for enterprise sales and marketing teams
• The self-dubbed 'Moneyball for Sales' company is built on CEO Anand Shah's consulting experience, and aims to provide enterprise companies with personalized insights to better engage with their customers.
• The company initially boostrapped, but after its customers began referring it to VCs, Databook's founders began considering scaling the company using VC money: "Our customers wanted us to double down," Shah told Business Insider.
• It just raised $5 million in its first round of seed funding using the pitch deck below.
• Click here to read more stories on BI Prime

The seed for Anand Shah's customer intelligence startup was planted ten years ago, back when his feet were firmly planted in a consulting career in London.

After successfully improving a client's sales performance, Shah realized that the way in which companies sold their products was ripe for disruption - sales performances were too susceptible to human error, and needed to be more systematized. And he carried that idea with him over to the US, through business school. In 2016, Shah co-founded Databook, to develop software to provide customer intelligence insights to sales teams.

"It's a bit of my fascination, understanding how companies work, and their supply chains," Shah told Business Insider. "Databook baked into the fabric of how we think about any companies on an operational basis."

Complimentary Tech Event

Transform talent with learning that works

Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More

While plenty of customer intelligence startups aim to provide data insights to enterprise companies, Shah says his background in finance and strategy has given the self-dubbed 'Moneyball for Sales' company an edge in the game. Databook's AI-powered platform doesn't just gather data but personalizes insights based on his own experience of what information C-suite executives value. These insights give sales and marketing teams an understanding of what accounts to chase and how to prioritize those clients.

"We want to give them insights that let them have access to the 'secret science' of what the best sales reps have been doing for decades," Shah said.

The company is still in its preliminary stages, beta-testing the product to its customers who primarily work in the enterprise software business (the CEO declined to share the names of his customers).

But Shah did give credit to his customers in landing Databook's $5 million seed funding, led by early-stage VC firm Threshold Ventures. The news was announced Wednesday.

Databook customers had begun making introductions to VC firms, Shah said. Only then did the company, which hadn't raised any money since its initial jumpstart from family and friends, consider getting outside funding to scale its services.

"Our customers wanted us to double down on research and development, and bring more innovation and products to the market quicker," Shah explained. "That was really the first signal for us."

And investors appeared to like the fact that Databook's customers were the ones endorsing the company. This was crucial, according to Shah.

"It's really about who you know," when it comes to fundraising, Shah told Business Insider.

Here's the pitch deck that Datacamp used to raise its first funding round: