Unicorn builders go B2B

👋 Hey, Egemen here.

Folks, funding is becoming a full jungle of its own these days.

In a market where building costs almost nothing, what gives you a real edge is the ability to sell and finding new customers. Today’s sponsor helps with that.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s on the menu today:

Trade shows are full of potential accounts, but figuring out who is worth your time can take days.

Lensmor helps you find relevant events, research exhibitors and potential attendees, and turn that research into a focused target-account list before the show.

Start with 2,000 free credits, no credit card required.

Build Your Free List

CB Insights tracked 59 leaders who helped build billion-dollar companies and then started AI companies.

None of the 11 consumer and retail veterans went back to consumers. Most of them now build AI for business operations. In Scaled, Traversal raised $120M at a $1B valuation after its monthly investigations grew from 513 to nearly 73,000 this year.

Five of the new companies already have valuations of $1B or more. Recursive Superintelligence, Core Automation, Astromech, Upscale AI and Genki Robotics are on that list.

Insurance shows the pattern well. Kyle Nakatsuji helped build Clearcover, and he now runs Dearborn Labs, which builds AI for insurers. David Sullivan left Unqork to start NevadoAI. He says NevadoAI needs fewer people than his last company, because its software automates back-office work.

My read: these founders start with buyers and investors who already trust them. If you sell into enterprise software or financial services, expect to meet one of them in a deal soon. They will also run with smaller teams, so they can price low for longer.

👉 Open the CB Insights list of 59 leaders and mark each one who builds in your category. Then write down one fact about your buyer that a veteran from another industry would miss. Put that fact on your homepage and use it in your next sales call. If you sell to consumers, test a business version of your product this quarter.

Are you ready? As revealed in our holiday playbook, Roku Ads Manager lets you easily set up, measure and optimize your self-serve holiday ad campaign. You can even create a shoppable ad unit that lets streamers buy directly from their remote.

Set up your campaign today.

For the first time, see the system that runs GTM at Attio, the #1 fastest-growing CRM on Brex and Ramp.

Attio’s Rev Ops and Solutions leads have written up all of it, including how it spots at-risk accounts early and surfaces upsell opportunities while they’re still warm.

Read the playbook.

New York / AI for site reliability engineering / announced 4 November 2026

Traversal has raised a $120M Series B at a $1B valuation. Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint Ventures and Khosla Ventures co-led the round. Sequoia and Battery Ventures joined, and Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia invested again.

Traversal builds AI agents that find out why production software breaks. Anish Agarwal (CEO), Raj Agrawal, Raaz Dwivedi and Ahmed Lone founded it. Agarwal and Agrawal hold PhDs from MIT, Dwivedi holds one from UC Berkeley, and Lone worked in quant trading at Citadel Securities.

Monthly investigations grew from 513 to nearly 73,000 this year. The Next Web reports that ARR grew ninefold this year, per the company. It names Nubank, DigitalOcean, PepsiCo and American Express as customers. Traversal has raised $173M to date.

About two-thirds of usage now goes past root-cause analysis. Teams also use Traversal for alert triage and release risk checks. Traversal will hire across research, engineering and go-to-market with the new money.

traversal.com / See the $120M announcement