Founded by serial entrepreneur Ryan Adamson alongside go-to-market veterans Nick Valla (CEO) and Ken Valla (CRO), ShiftUp has raised a $3 million seed round, led by investment veteran Phil Reed, with additional backing from former VCs, sales executives, CFOs, and CTOs at Fortune 500 companies. The funding will accelerate ShiftUp’s mission to embed a strategic AI assistant directly into enterprise sales teams.

Turning Sales Reps into Strategists - Without Hand-Holding

Enterprise sales teams often struggle with fragmented tools and inconsistent methodologies - what Nick and Ken Valla describe as being “trained on disparate workflows and forced into disconnected CRMs.” ShiftUp solves that by delivering a Salesforce-native AI assistant that conducts real-time account research, opportunity prioritization, stakeholder mapping, and strategic planning. Essentially, it’s like giving each rep a personalized sales strategist working behind the scenes.

This distinction matters. Founders often believe that building another analytics layer or dashboard is enough to gain adoption. But ShiftUp’s play is different - it eliminates the switching cost of behavior by embedding itself into the workflows sellers already rely on. Instead of teaching sales reps a new process, it reinforces existing ones with AI-driven intelligence, ensuring that adoption isn’t forced - it’s inevitable. The lesson here for other entrepreneurs is profound: true product-market fit isn’t about flashy features, it’s about becoming invisible inside workflows, where usage is not optional but automatic. When your product becomes part of the operating rhythm of your customer, you’ve moved from tool to infrastructure - and that’s when retention and expansion become a default outcome rather than a sales challenge.

Built by GTM Veterans, Backed by AI-Savvy Mentors

Ryan Adamson knows growth - having co-founded and scaled two billion-dollar exits, he brings execution experience and scaling chops. The Vallas bring structured sales methodology and deep GTM insight. Together, they’ve built an AI product that understands how deals are actually won, not just how they should be tracked. Their investor - Phil Reed and the group of operators behind the round - aren’t just passive backers; they’re reinvesting their real-world sales and leadership experience into ShiftUp’s vision.

Scaling Momentum: What the Seed Enables

The $3M injection will be used to:

• Accelerate product development - including advanced sequencing, contextual prioritization, and embedded strategy workflows
  
• Drive customer success and broaden enterprise adoption across tech, life sciences, and manufacturing industries
  
• Build brand and team capacity within sales, engineering, and marketing functions
  

ShiftUp’s early pipeline is expanding quickly, with enthusiastic responses from CROs who see immediate potential in making their teams smarter, faster, and more consistent.

Solving a Post-Pandemic Sales Crisis

The shift to remote work brought a rupture in institutional knowledge and sales capability. As Ken Valla notes, companies are grappling with what used to be segue-ins - they’ve lost foundational skills. ShiftUp fixes that by codifying high-performer behaviors into AI, allowing reps to ramp up instantly and sell confidently - without retraining months of institutional memory.

Looking Ahead: The Future of GTM is AI-First

Over the next year, ShiftUp will:

• Expand platform integrations beyond Salesforce
  
• Refine AI models for vertical-specific workflows
  
• Continue scaling across industries navigating sales disruption and digital transformation
  

By automating the salesperson’s strategic thinking - rather than just their tasks - ShiftUp is building a future where selling is smarter, more agile, and less fragile.