At Madrona, we’ve long believed that the most transformative software companies don’t just digitize existing workflows, they reimagine them entirely for how work should happen in the real-world context of users today. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce our investment in Clarify, an AI-native CRM that doesn’t just help teams manage customer relationships — it autonomously drives them forward.
Clarify is building what we believe is the next frontier in go-to-market software: an autonomous CRM powered by always-on, context-aware Ambient Intelligence. In light of the intelligent applications revolution, we believe CRM is poised for a ground-up reinvention. This will involve AI technology that doesn’t just assist, it observes, learns, adapts, and acts on behalf of the user.
This is more than a product shift. It’s a foundational reimagination of how customer-facing teams operate — and a business model that aligns around simplicity, speed, and performance instead of software sprawl and complexity. CRM is one of the largest and most ubiquitous categories in software — every business, from startups to global enterprises, relies on a CRM to manage customer relationships, making it more than a $100 billion TAM with mission-critical importance across industries.
That’s why we’re excited to announce our investment in Clarify’s recently announced $22.5 million fundraise, alongside our friends at USVP and Gradient Ventures.
The Problem: CRM Has Become the Enemy of Productivity
For decades, CRMs have promised to make go-to-market teams more efficient. In reality, they’ve become administrative burdens. Reps are stuck updating fields, logging calls, and digging through disconnected data. The average seller spends more of their time on non-selling tasks, with CRM maintenance topping the list. In addition, they are required to use four, five, or more different sales tech tools to accomplish necessary activities around the CRM, such as call recording, automated email outreach, and intelligent analytics. This is not only expensive, but it also adds to the overhead and confusion for both reps and sales managers.
Despite the buzz around “AI-powered” CRMs, most still operate on a legacy premise: that the human must manage the system. Whether it’s Salesforce, HubSpot, or the newest entrants, the burden remains the same — you still have to feed the systems.
That’s the broken paradigm Clarify is out to fix, and one of the reasons why we were excited to partner with the Clarify team.
Clarify: The Autonomous CRM That Works for You
Clarify flips the CRM script. It is built not as a better database, but as an intelligent teammate — one that integrates deeply across tools like email, calendar, ZoomInfo, Apollo, and Gainsight to automatically ingest, enrich, and act on customer data.
Clarify doesn’t rely on prompts or macros to be “smart.” It’s built on principles of Ambient Intelligence: a system that operates independently, understands context in real time, and takes full actions without constant user input.
We see a truly autonomous CRM as one that:
- Operates without supervision — no manual data entry, no note logging, no upkeep.
- Adapts to your workflows, rather than forcing rigid processes.
- Understands intent and context, surfacing what matters most before you ask.
- Continuously improves, learning from team behavior and outcomes.
- Clarify isn’t a chatbot bolted onto a legacy CRM — it’s a purpose-built, AI-native system that manages customer engagement autonomously from first touch to closed deal.
The Founding Team: Customer-Obsessed Builders on a Mission to Fix CRM
Clarify’s co-founding team has spent their careers at the intersection of automation, Enterprise sales, GTM, and AI. Their experiences are shaped across multiple startups, enterprise software companies, and even their own previous entrepreneurial journeys. This has given them a unique insider’s perspective and firsthand understanding of what was broken in traditional CRM systems and what it would take to reinvent them for the AI era.
- Patrick Thompson: We’ve known Patrick since his time co-founding Iteratively and leading product at Amplitude. His experience scaling data and analytics products, combined with deep empathy for go-to-market teams, makes him uniquely suited to reimagine CRM from the ground up.
- Austin Hay: As a second-time founder, Austin brings a sharp operational lens to Clarify’s vision. He previously served as head of MarTech at Ramp, where he experienced firsthand the fragmentation and inefficiencies that plague modern sales stacks. Across roles at Runway, mParticle, and Branch, Austin developed a deep understanding of how commercial teams scale and where traditional CRMs fall short.
- Ondrej Hrebicek: Ondrej is a three-time founder with a unique blend of technical depth and product intuition. Prior to co-founding Clarify, he served as the director of engineering at Amplitude and previously held the roles of CTO and co-founder at Iteratively, alongside Patrick. His track record in building high-scale data systems is matched by his experience leading engineering teams — from startup scrappiness to enterprise-grade execution. Ondrej began his journey as the founder of Syncplicity, which was acquired by EMC, where he went on to lead engineering. His passion for elegant architecture and frictionless user experience is evident in every layer of Clarify’s platform.
But a category-shaping company is more than its founders. We have also been deeply impressed with the caliber of talent these founders have been hiring, as well as the customer-focused culture they are clearly building, setting a relentless pace, executing extremely well, while still having fun and caring for team members.
A Massive Market, Ripe for Change
CRM is one of the largest and most critical categories in enterprise software. Salesforce is, of course, synonymous with the category and demonstrates the category’s scale, with a market cap of over $250B, $38B in revenue, and $12B in FCF (as of FY Jan ’25). HubSpot, with a $32B market cap, $2.6B in revenue, and $560M in free cash flow (as of Dec ’24), is another strong example of the market’s size and potential. Yet despite their dominance, Salesforce’s aging architecture and deployment complexity are driving increased overhead, while HubSpot’s steep learning curve, rigidity, and rising costs are turning users away. Enterprises are beginning to rip out legacy systems, and startups are building internal CRMs just to avoid the bloat. The signal from the market is clear: there is growing demand for tools that prioritize simplicity, speed, and autonomy.
While there are also a number of next-gen CRM startups — like Attio, Day AI, and Rox — tackling the space with innovative approaches, Clarify stood out to us for their focus on creating a true Unified Revenue System. Its product is built around ambient intelligence: automatically capturing customer interactions, surfacing relevant context, and enabling teams to collaborate seamlessly across the entire go-to-market motion. Where others start with narrower use cases like prospecting or solo rep tooling, Clarify is building the connective tissue that ties customer knowledge across an entire organization and allowing their customers to manage the entire customer journey end-to-end.
Clarify is delivering the CRM that teams actually want — and the one they’ll keep using because it keeps getting smarter. They have started by addressing midmarket and high-growth companies, from startups adopting their first CRM to more mature companies that are switching to a modern, integrated experience. For any business that has not yet adopted a CRM, adopting a tool like Clarify is a no-brainer – it immediately supercharges your sales activities with far less complexity and a fraction of the cost. We were also impressed that they were already starting to see customers replace Hubspot, plus several other sales automation tools, with Clarify. Clarify already has impressive traction with over 100 early-stage teams in their pilot program, with 70% engaging on a weekly basis. We also took notice that a number of our portfolio companies, like Ravenna AI, were proactively adopting Clarify.
Our Belief
At Madrona, we invest in software that offers a step-change in how people work and how businesses operate. Clarify does exactly that. It removes the burden of CRM, delivers business outcomes autonomously, and brings joy back to selling. We’re excited to partner with Patrick, Austin, Ondrej, and the entire Clarify team on this journey, and we believe they’re building a generational company at the heart of the intelligent application wave. If you’re building a go-to-market motion and want a CRM that actually works for you, try Clarify!
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