AI sales agents shift to inbound: 1mind raises $30M as Mindy starts closing
AI agents are new, but sales teams are already putting them to work. 1mind, co-founded by Amanda Kahlow (previously founder and CEO at 6sense), announced a $30 million Series A led by Battery Ventures, bringing total funding to $40 million.
Kahlow's prior company launched in 2013 to help teams find intent signals across the web. She left in 2020. Now she's back with a different bet: agents that don't spam - they sell.
What makes Mindy different
Most sales agents hammer outbound. Mindy doesn't. "I'm not playing in outbound," Kahlow says. The focus is inbound: meet buyers where they already show intent, then guide them from first touch to close.
- Augments self-serve websites and handles live chat with full product context.
- Joins video calls to act as a sales engineer: answers technical questions, compares competitors, configures solutions, and keeps the conversation moving.
- Onboards new customers post-sale, reducing handoffs that slow momentum.
- Trained on a company's full knowledge base (products, technical details, competitive positions) and uses deterministic guardrails to reduce AI hallucinations. If the answer isn't known, it says so.
Under the hood, 1mind uses a mix of large-language models, including OpenAI and Google Gemini. The aim is consistent, on-script responses that reflect the company's source of truth.
Traction that matters to sales leaders
1mind has been in market for about a year and is used by more than 30 companies, including HubSpot, LinkedIn, and New Relic. These are annual contracts, not pilots, and the average deal size is in the six figures.
The team also sells with its own agent. Kahlow even created an avatar of herself for investor diligence - it fielded deep questions from the data room, and feedback called the conversation design "very nuanced." The avatar is available via her LinkedIn page for public interaction.
Will agents replace AEs?
Short answer: not yet. "We're replacing the website. We're replacing the sales engineer, customer success, but that AE-customer relationship is still happening," Kahlow says.
The blocker is trust in large enterprise deals. Over time, she expects more AE tasks to be automated and even agent-to-agent transactions to happen behind the scenes - no avatars, just clean transfers of requirements and documentation.
What to do now if you run sales
- Map your inbound journey. Identify where buyers stall: pricing page, technical Q&A, implementation risk. Place an agent there first.
- Centralize a single source of truth. Product docs, pricing, competitive intel, case studies. Build strict guardrails and keep the "I don't know" answer acceptable.
- Pilot on one high-intent surface (e.g., pricing page or enterprise contact form) and one segment. Track: first response time, booked meetings, cycle length, ACV, and win rate.
- Define handoff rules. For example: if deal value > $50k or security questionnaire requested, alert an AE and route live.
- Train reps to co-sell with agents. Create prompt snippets for objection handling, demo flows, and follow-up. Let reps shadow and review transcripts.
- Cover governance. Get consent for call participation, log interactions, and sync summaries to your CRM.
Funding, headcount, and who's betting
The $30 million Series A was led by Battery Ventures. Other participants include Primary Ventures, Wing Venture Capital, Operator Collective, Harmonic Growth Partners, and Success Venture Partners, plus angels from Monday.com, ZoomInfo, Databricks, Box, Gong, Braze, and Verkada.
1mind employs 44 people today and lists 71 job openings, including account executives. Growth isn't just technical - they're hiring sellers too.
Accuracy over flair
1mind leans heavily on deterministic behavior: once the agent ingests your playbook, it should stick to it. That favors reliable answers over clever ones - exactly what high-intent buyers want when stakes are real.
For sales teams, the takeaway is simple. Keep your knowledge clean, make handoffs obvious, and let the agent handle the grind so humans can focus on trust and judgment.
Level up your sales org with AI skills
If you're building agent-assisted funnels or retraining your team, these resources can help:
- AI courses by job role - curate learning paths for AEs, SEs, and CS.
- Latest AI courses - stay current on model updates and agent workflows.
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