Kobe Bryant, Goldman Sachs Invest in Sherman Oaks Startup

Sales engagement analytics provider RingDNA has received $30 million in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. Other investors in the Sherman Oaks company include former Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant through his Bryant Stibel investment firm and Palisades Growth Capital. RingDNA makes artificial intelligence-powered sales tools that monitor sales reps’ communications with customers via phone calls, text, email and voicemail. The software analyzes the conversations to help the salespeople sell more with improved customer satsifaction. Clients include Lyft Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Amazon Web Services. Chief Executive Howard Brown said that RingDNA’s technology has processed more than 60 million conversations to determine patterns to optimize performance for effectiveness and satisfaction between both parties. “It’s not about automation or removing humans from the processes of sales and customer service,” Brown said in a statement. “Rather, it’s about augmenting, contextualizing and training our reps to be better.”