Inbound sales has always been treated like a sprint but executed like a waiting game. Prospects raise their hand, and companies still think it is fine to let them linger while a rep eventually replies. The math is cruel: respond within one minute and conversion rates spike tenfold, but stretch past five minutes and you are burning money. Spara, the New York City startup that just locked down a $15 million seed round, exists to kill the wait. Co-founders David Walker and Zander Pease are not theorizing about the problem, they are building AI agents for voice, email, and chat that qualify and convert before human reflexes even kick in.
Walker and Pease did not rush into it. They spent six months interviewing more than 200 sales leaders before writing a line of code. The finding was universal: outbound is loud, inbound is valuable, and most companies are tripping over themselves when prospects show intent. So they built a platform where multimodal AI agents hit back instantly, schedule meetings, and keep buyers engaged while interest peaks. Early proof is already in play. At Rho, a business banking platform, Spara booked more than 90 meetings in the first 30 days and converted half of qualified traffic. Three minutes from initial chat to confirmed meeting is not a nice-to-have, it is a market reset.
Investors saw the signal. Inspired Capital led a $4.5 million pre-seed in February 2024, Radical Ventures came in with a $10.5 million extension in July, and the roster filled with XYZ Ventures, FJ Labs, and Remarkable Ventures. Strategic angels from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Databricks, and G2 joined the round, with Anthropic’s Kate Jensen and OpenAI’s James Dyett among the names. When the very operators shaping modern AI back a sales platform, it says this is not hype, it is trajectory.
This is not a chatbot wearing enterprise clothes. Each deployment trains on a company’s sales process, brand voice, and qualification rules, integrating into CRM and marketing systems while flexing across channels. A prospect can start with email, shift to chat, and finish on a call, and Spara keeps the thread intact. The design is centered on buyers, not sellers. Walker’s experience scaling Triplemint to 350 people and through acquisition by The Agency merges with Pease’s platform work at Hyperscience AI and his entrepreneurial run with Nomad Health. One turns process into revenue, the other turns architecture into scale.
Spara’s 16-person team, two-thirds engineers, spent 18 months in stealth refining the system. With $15 million now fueling expansion, they are hiring, deepening multimodal capabilities, and chasing a conversational AI market projected to grow from $11.6 billion in 2024 to $41.4 billion by 2030. The real hunt is the $28 billion sales tech space, where inbound has been treated like an afterthought. Spara is making it the main event.
David Walker calls himself a builder, not an armchair executive. That ethos runs through Spara. Inbound sales does not need theory. It needs speed, precision, and scale, and that is exactly what this team is putting on the table.
