The technology that runs our companies these days is staggering in its complexity. We have moved from a monolith to a microservices world, from boxes to SaaS, and while that has added agility to the enterprise, it has come at the cost of a metric f-ton of services and software platforms required by every team in the building.<\/p>\n
CIOs need a place to commiserate and get better recommendations on what tech works well and what should be placed in the proverbial recycle bin. Meanwhile, salespeople and investors want to hear these decision-makers\u2019 views on emerging products to identify rich veins to invest in.<\/p>\n
At the core of Pulse<\/a> is a community of vetted CIOs and other tech procurers, currently numbering more than 15,000. On top of this core group of users, Pulse has built a series of products to help exploit their collective wisdom, including several new products the company is announcing today.<\/p>\n In addition to new product launches, the company is announcing a $6.5 million Series A round from AV8 Ventures, <\/a> which is exclusively backed by mega-insurer Allianz Group and launched last year with a debut $170 million fund<\/a>. This round closed in December according to the company and brings the startup\u2019s total funding to $10.5 million.<\/p>\n AV8 Ventures launches with $170M to invest in digital health, mobility and enterprise tech<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Pulse\u2019s existing product offerings assist product marketers and investment researchers who want to get a \u201cpulse\u201d on the marketplace for tech products by polling CIOs and testing out language around new features and initiatives.<\/p>\n \u201cAs an example, Microsoft will come to us and say, \u2018Hey, we want to test our messaging and positioning before we sort of blow it up as a campaign. We\u2019d like to do that very quickly through your community.\u2019 And then we facilitate that through a series of questions through surveys and get back the insights to them very quickly,\u201d co-founder and CEO Mayank Mehta explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWe think about this as truly becoming a Bloomberg terminal for marketers and investors,\u201d he said. Researchers \u201ccan use this as a great way to get a real-time pulse on their buyers and understand how the market is moving, so they can make appropriate investments and ship strategies in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n He said that the company worked with 50 customers last year and delivered some 150 reports. As for the CIOs themselves, \u201cThe community is open so long as you are a director level or above,\u201d Mehta said.<\/p>\n In addition to this product for investors and market researchers, the company is also announcing the launch of Product IQ today, which takes the needs of a particular CIO user into account to offer them \u201cpersonalized\u201d product recommendations for their companies. Those recommendations are surfaced from the continuous data that CIOs are adding into the system through polls and opinion surveys.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to imagine and rethink how decision-making is done for technology executives, especially in a world like this where teams are changing so dramatically,\u201d Mehta said.<\/p>\n Crowdsourced research platforms in the tech industry have become a popular area for VC investment in recent years. StackShare<\/a>, which raised $5.2 million from e.Ventures<\/a>, has focused on helping engineers learn from other engineers about the tech they have chosen for their infrastructure. Meanwhile, startups like Wonder<\/a> and NewtonX<\/a>, which raised $12 million from Two Sigma Ventures<\/a>, have focused less on technical solutions and instead answer business questions such as market sizing or competitive landscape.<\/p>\n\n