3Austrian startup Kickscale, an AI-powered sales and intelligence platform, has raised €2.1 million Seed to scale its business in Europe and later to the Middle East and Asia.
Kickscale provides a revenue intelligence platform that uses AI to capture, analyse, and organise real and virtual sales and customer conversations. By transforming conversation data into actionable insights, it empowers sales teams to forecast more accurately, identify at-risk deals, and replicate winning sales strategies.
Unlike dominant US solutions, such as Gong, Kickscale’s technology is built from the ground up to address the needs of European SME businesses, including data privacy standards, and multilingual and regional environments.
European companies experience unique challenges when using European software:
- European B2B sales cycles typically involve longer relationship-building phases than the more transactional American approach.
- Europe isn't a monolith. Germans, Italians, Dutch, and French all have distinct business cultures with different expectations. American tools rarely account for these nuances.
- Most European deals happen in local languages, but US platforms primarily support English, creating unnecessary communication barriers.
- European privacy norms and GDPR requirements create fundamental compatibility issues with how many American sales platforms are architected.
Since launching in 2024, Kickscale has quickly acquired over 100 B2B clients across the UK, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, including HILL International Group, Haufe Group, KK Company, ApprovalMax, and bookingkit.
Kickscale’s customers have reported up to a 24 per cent improvement in sales closing rates and an average of 40 hours saved per sales rep on routine and administrative tasks.
The platform aligns sales with marketing and product teams through customer-driven insights, improving both strategy and execution. With automated note-taking, key moment detection, and rep performance tracking, Kickscale helps reduce time spent on manual tasks and enables managers to coach more effectively.
aws Gründungsfonds led the round, with participation from altitude VC, Calm/Storm Ventures, and Carinthian Venture Fond. Notable existing investors continuing their support include the former CEO of Zalando Lounge, Julius Göllner, serial social media entrepreneur Michael Kamleitner, and Bitmovin co-founders Stefan Lederer and Christopher Mueller.
“Kickscale is designed specifically for European SME and Mid-Market companies with unwavering commitments to data privacy, seamless usability, and sophisticated multilingual capabilities that understand the nuances of European dialects and business cultures.", said Gerald Zankl, Kickscale’s CEO and co-founder.
“For far too long, European businesses have relied on US tech giants for critical sales intelligence tools.
Today's political uncertainties make it clear that Europe needs more sovereign technology solutions. We're building an alternative to US platforms that currently dominate the global market.”
Ingo Drexler, Partner at āltitude and Kickscale investor, said:
“We've invested in Kickscale precisely because they offer European businesses the sovereign technology alternative they need. Every day that European SMEs continue to rely on US sales platforms is another day of unnecessary vulnerability to American political whims.
The time for digital independence is now and we are proud to be growing together with the excellent Kickscale team."
Hans Christian Heinemeyer, Chief Revenue Officer at bookingkit, said:
"We've looked into several US-based platforms, but it felt like they were built for a different business culture and mostly for big enterprises.
Their approach simply didn't match how we build and maintain client relationships in the DACH region and in Europe in general. Furthermore, GDPR and legal compliance is a crucial requirement for us."
Lead image: Kickscale. Photo: uncredited.
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