Belarusian-founded AI sales assistant Skarbe has raised $600,000 in Pre‑Seed funding to simplify selling for entrepreneurs who hate CRMs.
A recent wave of solo founders, indie startups, and lean teams empowered by AI are redefining how companies are built, but most sales tools haven’t caught up.
Popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot are built for structured sales departments, not product-focused builders wearing multiple hats. Today’s founders juggle customer conversations, fundraising, hiring, and execution.
They don’t have time to manually update pipelines or dig through dashboards. That’s unacceptable in a climate where over 90 per cent of global businesses are classified as SMEs, 99 per cent of EU enterprises qualify as micro or small businesses, and over 80 per cent of small businesses in the US are solo ventures.
Skarbe’s AI assistant connects directly to email and calendar, then suggests specific next steps, drafts follow-ups in the user’s tone of voice, and tracks deal and contact activity. It automatically captures meeting insights, nudges users about overdue action items, and organises all communication into a streamlined interface.
Once integrated, it can act as a chat interface and generate anything from meeting prep briefs to prioritised to-do lists. Users can ask questions like “Prepare me for my next meeting” or “What should I do today?” and get answers without sinking time into manual admin or updating pipelines.
According to Mikita Martynau, CEO and co-founder of Skarbe, most founders don’t actually hate selling.
“They hate CRMs that aren’t built for their needs. When we started Skarbe, we set out to build a sales co-pilot that small teams like ours would actually want, and what we wanted was something radically simpler than the industry-standard CRMs that feel like a second job.
Skarbe is for founders who are already juggling product, customers, and hiring.
Our users say it’s not just fast and flexible but emotionally liberating. This pre-seed round is fuel to the fire, and we’re grateful to our investors for throwing their weight behind what we’re doing.”
With admin managed, the sales process becomes totally human again, and something small teams do alongside building and developing. Skarbe calls this idea “vibe sales,” and it means anyone can sell if they have the kind of tool that keeps them from getting bogged down in spreadsheets, playbooks, and sales ops.
Skarbe was founded by Mikita Martynau and Alex Talyuk, two Belarusian expats and longtime collaborators with a shared background in tech. Mikita previously helped scale PandaDoc from $10 million to $100 million in revenue, launching major product lines like payments and forms as the company grew into a unicorn.
Alex, now CTO, worked at large-scale AI startups in San Francisco, focusing on systems for computer vision and NLP, and brings deep experience in UX across mobile and web product development.
Ilya Korzun, COO, initially became involved in Skarbe as the company’s first angel investor, having built ventures in advertising and production; he now leads operations and finance.
FIRSTPICK led the round, with participation from Somersault Ventures and angels Andreas Mihalovits, who has invested in more than 150 startups, and Jeroen Van Ermen, founder of Talent Business Partners.
Dmitrij Sosunov, Partner at FIRSTPICK, says:
“Skarbe tackles one of the most painful problems in modern work: staying on top of everything. By turning your inbox, meetings, and calls into structured deal flow — with zero input — Skarbe is redefining how operators, founders, and teams get things done.
The team behind Skarbe understands that AI should take care of everything but the essential human element, and that’s what’s made their product so successful out of the gate.”
Skarbe is currently building out an automated lead qualification, where the assistant can execute steps like drafting and sending follow-ups or replying to leads, on the founder’s behalf, with approval. A mobile app is in development, and the company will train personalised LLMs based on Mistral within each user’s private workspace.
The investment will accelerate Skarbe’s platform, which already supports 100+ languages and serves 2,500+ users. It is currently available for trial with a freemium model.
Lead image: Skarbe. Photo: uncredited.
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