Some founders see a market turning long before anyone labels it a trend. When I reconnected with my friends from our Salesforce days, Kraig Swensrud and Sean Whiteley, in early 2020 about their new company, Qualified, they had already mapped out the future of the B2B pipeline: AI-driven, customer-aware, and built for a world where generating demand was only getting harder. It was immediately clear to me that they were already building the next chapter of how revenue teams would operate.
I officially partnered with the founders Kraig, Sean, Bing and Gopal in April 2020, during a moment when every assumption in GTM was being rewritten. Offices were empty, events vanished, and the long-standing playbooks for demand generation collapsed almost overnight. And yet, despite the uncertainty, Kraig and Sean came into their office every single day. This was their third company together, shaped by the decade they spent working across some of the highest-growth years at Salesforce. I knew exactly what they were capable of, and Norwest leading the Qualified Series A investment, ultimately becoming the largest shareholder, was one of the easiest decisions we’ve ever made.
A Vision Forged Through Experience
Even before AI dominated the conversation, Kraig and Sean had a clear view of where revenue teams were heading. They understood the fragmentation across CRM, marketing, and customer data because they had lived it through multiple cycles and multiple companies. The insight behind Qualified was simple but powerful: your website is your highest-intent channel and it should perform like your best rep.
Qualified brought customer intelligence, data, and real-time engagement together in a way no one else had. The product gave reps instant context from Salesforce, layered with marketing and behavioral signals, and wrapped it all in a seamless experience built natively for enterprise workflows that included chat, video, voice, and screen-share. It wasn’t just about capturing leads; it was about accelerating conversations and turning interest into revenue in real time.
That deep understanding of customer data and rep workflows set the foundation for Qualified to grow and scale quickly to many hundreds of enterprise customers today.
The Inflection Point
Qualified didn’t follow the typical early-stage growth arc. Kraig, Sean, Bing and Gopal spent the early years building with precision and discipline, making sure the product was exceptional before scaling. And once they hit that inflection point, the acceleration was immediate. Three forces hit at the same time:
1. The Launch of Piper the AI SDR Agent
When the team’s AI-native product launched, it arrived exactly as the market shifted from AI curiosity to AI urgency. Revenue teams needed leverage, automation, and intelligent prioritization, all of which Piper delivered. It became the engine behind nearly 100% year-over-year growth.
2. A Market Searching for Trust
Earning customer trust in the world of native AI is not easy for most vendors, it takes extraordinary discipline and focus. Qualified leaned in and earned that trust as a result.
3. B2B Pipeline Slowdown
Demand-gen teams everywhere were struggling. Most tools weren’t built for the new environment, except Qualified. Once the product reached true maturity, the market responded quickly and decisively.
A Partnership Built on Trust and Shared Judgment
Norwest has had the privilege of being deeply involved throughout the journey. Our support extended beyond capital, including helping to recruit key executives, making customer introductions, and collaborating on launches and positioning, all as the industry continued to evolve.
But more than anything, our partnership was anchored in trust, knowing when to push and when to step back, all while staying aligned on the path forward.
A Full Circle Moment
Today, Salesforce announced a definitive agreement to acquire Qualified. For all of us, this is a full-circle moment.
We built products together at Salesforce. We learned customer-first thinking inside its walls. We saw firsthand how great platforms are created and scaled. And now, upon close of the transaction, Kraig, Sean, Bing and Gopal will be returning to help bring Qualified’s agentic marketing expertise to Salesforce, accelerating Agentforce Sales and Marketing products.
This acquisition will further empower humans and AI agents to collaborate as teammates — enabling “always-on” AI agents to autonomously qualify and nurture leads while human sellers focus on closing deals. The addition of Qualified’s capabilities will accelerate the development of a comprehensive agentic marketing solution, transforming corporate websites into engaging, multi-modal conversational experiences that turn traffic into pipeline.
Salesforce has been a committed partner throughout Qualified’s journey, from go-to-market alignment to ongoing support from the Salesforce Ventures team. I spent over six years of my career leading product at Salesforce, and over the years we’ve partnered across multiple companies and transactions. I’m proud to see Qualified join that lineage.
Looking Ahead
To Kraig, Sean, Bing, Gopal and the entire Qualified team: thank you. It has been one of the great privileges of my career to partner so closely with you through the early days of an empty office, the product breakthroughs, the moments when the market tested every assumption, the acceleration that followed, and beyond.
What you’ve built is extraordinary. I’m thrilled for what comes next at Salesforce and proud to have been part of the journey.
— Scott Beechuk, Norwest
