Field sales teams spend most of their time travelling and meeting customers. Still, most sales tools are designed for office use, resulting in slow admin work, difficult mobile app usability, and incomplete CRM records.
Founded by Nicolas Christiaen, Jonas Deprez, and Xander Berkein, Donna, an AI assistant built for field sales on the go, tackles these issues by automating meeting preparation, note-taking, real-time CRM updates, and post-meeting follow-ups. Customers report up to 75% less admin work, 10x higher CRM adoption, cleaner data, and up to 20% higher conversion rates.
In a conversation with TFN, Nicolas and Jonas share, “Donna was actually born from our own frustrations as founders who spent a lot of time on the road meeting customers. We saw first-hand how existing sales tools weren’t suited for mobile teams and wanted to change that.”
They added, “There’s this misconception that field sales is just office sales on wheels, but the reality is far more complex, so Donna had to be built differently from the ground up.”
Today, this Ghent-based startup raised $4.8M in seed funding to expand its AI assistant for field sales workers. The round was led by Frontline Ventures, with support from Pitchdrive, Fortino Capital, WeLoveFounders, Syndicate One, New School, Everywhere Ventures, and several angel investors.
A tool built for sales teams on the road
The founders recognised the pressure on sales reps to do more with fewer resources while existing tools remained office-centric. Donna’s vision is to elevate human-to-human interactions in B2B sales by using AI to automate routine tasks, enabling reps to focus fully on customer engagement and closing deals.
Nicolas and Jonas elaborate, “Our goal is to make sure salespeople never arrive at a meeting unprepared and never lose important details afterwards. With Donna, even the smallest context is captured, from the first client handshake to the final deal.”
The company promotes an always-on, multimodal AI assistant that anticipates needs and provides contextual intelligence, transforming commute and on-the-go moments into productive selling time
Donna’s technology integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, HubSpot, Outlook, and Google Calendar, supporting over 40 languages. It provides personalised, hyper-contextual briefings before meetings, captures detailed notes automatically during conversations, and drafts follow-up emails with minimal manual input.
Donna creates a “system of context” for each salesperson, helping them work faster and more consistently. It is deep CRM integration, real-time AI-driven insights, and a focus on field sales workflows rather than generic office use.
“At Donna, we believe B2B business will always require human-to-human interaction. AI shouldn’t replace that—it should elevate it. With Donna, we already proved today that AI can be deployed with a quick time to value and at scale in real-world operations,” added Jonas Deprez, co-CEO and co-founder.
Unlike Salesforce Einstein, HubSpot Sales Hub, Gong, Outreach, Sybill, Apollo.io, Jeeva.AI, and RingSense, Donna is purpose-built for mobile field sales, emphasising automation of nuanced tasks and real-time interactive support.
What about diversity?
When we asked about diversity, Nicolas and Jonas share, “We’re proud that over 40% of our engineering and product team identify as women or minorities. Diversity is a key driver for creativity in our team and essential for building truly global products.”
What’s next?
The company aims to maintain rapid adoption growth, deepen integrations with enterprise systems, and solidify its market leadership as the AI assistant of choice for field sales worldwide.
Nicolas and Jonas conclude, “For next year, we’re prioritising expansion into North America and launching new integrations that will redefine on-the-go productivity for sales teams.”
“Sales reps want to spend time selling, not trawling through CRMs to keep them up to date. For field-based reps, that admin burden is even heavier, with less time at the desk and fewer hands to spare for note-taking and follow-ups. Donna’s multimodal product fits how field sales really works, equipping an overlooked market with better tools so teams can focus on hitting quota,” notes Will Prendergast, Partner at Frontline Ventures.
