Connect The Dots

Connect The Dots (ctd.ai) is a relationship intelligence platform designed to help sales teams and professionals leverage their networks to build pipeline and accelerate revenue. The company was founded by Salesforce veterans Drew Sechrist (CEO), Ian Swinson (Head of Design & Marketing), Luka Trikic (COO, Head of Engineering), and Noah Lehmann-Haupt (Head of Product). The founders' experience at Salesforce, where relationship-based sales were critical to growth, directly inspired the creation of CTD. Drew Sechrist, for example, was employee #36 at Salesforce and learned firsthand how to leverage relationships for warm introductions to close larger deals faster. After leaving Salesforce, he realized he lost access to the valuable relationship history stored in his corporate email, a problem CTD is designed to solve by allowing users to maintain their network graph for life.

The platform operates by applying AI to the metadata of users' synced email accounts (from, to, date fields) and LinkedIn contacts to map and score the strength of professional relationships. It creates a unified graph of a company's entire collective network, including employees, investors, and advisors. This allows users to identify the strongest and warmest paths to key decision-makers at target accounts, moving away from ineffective cold outreach. The core product imports, deduplicates, and enriches contact data automatically, providing insights into connection strength and notifying users of job changes. Features include AI-powered search across the team's network, the ability to create shared lists of target accounts, and tools to request introductions and ghost-write emails for connectors, making the referral process scalable.

Connect The Dots employs a freemium business model. It offers a free plan for individuals, a 'Professional' tier for power networkers, a 'Team' plan for up to 25 members, and a custom 'Business' plan for enterprise-level clients. The paid tiers offer advanced features like unlimited AI searches, CRM integration, advanced API access, and dedicated customer support. In December 2021, the company announced a $15 million Series A funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Cloud Apps Capital Partners and Velvet Sea Ventures, to further develop its platform that scales relationship-based sales.

Keywords: relationship intelligence, network mapping, sales acceleration, warm introductions, lead generation, AI in sales, professional networking, contact management, CRM integration, sales pipeline, account-based sales, business development, go-to-market strategy, referral automation, collective network, relationship graph, B2B sales, revenue growth, Salesforce alumni, contact scoring