Sam Blond left his role as a venture capitalist at Founders Fund a year ago, just eighteen months after starting. He publicly stated that being a VC was not for him and that he was returning to an operating role. This week, he officially launched his new startup, Monaco, from stealth mode.
Monaco was co-founded with his brother, Brian Blond, a former sales professional turned venture capitalist at Human Capital. The founding team also includes Abishek Viswanathan, previously CPO at Apollo and Qualtrics, and Malay Desai, formerly SVP of engineering at Clari.
The company has raised a total of thirty-five million dollars, comprising a ten million dollar seed round and a twenty-five million dollar Series A. Both rounds were led by Founders Fund with participation from Human Capital. Monaco has been testing its AI sales platform in a private beta and has now moved to a public beta.
The Blond brothers, who are well-connected in the industry, attracted notable angel investors including Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison, Y Combinator chief Garry Tan, and Greenoaks Capital founder Neil Mehta.
Monaco enters the competitive field of AI sales technology with a distinct approach. It is not only offering an AI-native alternative to existing SaaS tools but also integrating experienced human salespeople into the AI process. These experts monitor and guide the AI’s work, ensuring accuracy and training the system.
The startup targets seed and Series A-stage companies with a product suite featuring an AI-native customer relationship management system and a proprietary database for finding prospects. Its AI agents can create and execute email outreach campaigns and draft follow-up emails, all supervised by human experts. Additional features include a meeting notetaker.
The product aims to automate sales grunt work by replacing entire workflows with agents. For example, Monaco builds prospect databases, identifies key contacts at target companies, orchestrates outreach sequences, and can schedule meetings.
The human-in-the-loop salespeople prevent AI hallucinations and train the system, while actual customer meetings are conducted by people, not avatars. This positions Monaco as an AI sales startup focused on augmentation rather than human replacement. It provides access to experienced sales professionals for companies not yet ready to hire them directly.
Currently, Monaco views Hubspot as its main competitor, offering a more affordable option for young companies compared to market leader Salesforce. Pricing is a flat fee, currently discounted during the beta period, though specific rates were not disclosed.
The founders acknowledge the crowded market, which includes numerous Y Combinator graduates, startups like Attio and Clay, and AI sales development representative tools from companies like 11x and Artisan. Incumbents like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Zoominfo also offer their own AI tools.
Sam Blond notes that today’s leading sales platforms were built in a different era and that no new contender has yet emerged as a definitive winner. He believes the market is ripe for a new leader due to a platform shift, and he aims for Monaco to fill that role.
When asked why he chose such a competitive space, Blond explained that, as a non-technical founder with a career entirely in sales, a sales technology company was the natural fit. He is enjoying the challenge. Monaco employs around forty people, primarily career salespeople, in an office decorated with motivational posters and featuring a gong that rings each time the AI secures a meeting with a prospect.