{"id":9285,"date":"2026-08-01T02:18:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/01\/exclusive-former-meta-and-slack-engineers-raise-15m-for-new-startup-centralize-to-build-a-deal-gps-for-enterprise-sales\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T02:18:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T23:18:46","slug":"exclusive-former-meta-and-slack-engineers-raise-15m-for-new-startup-centralize-to-build-a-deal-gps-for-enterprise-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handoli.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/01\/exclusive-former-meta-and-slack-engineers-raise-15m-for-new-startup-centralize-to-build-a-deal-gps-for-enterprise-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Former Meta And Slack Engineers Raise $15M For New Startup Centralize To Build A \u2018Deal GPS\u2019 For Enterprise Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"

While working as a product tech lead at a startup, <\/span>Rachit Kataria<\/span><\/a> watched a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar enterprise account suddenly fall into jeopardy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After pausing his entire engineering team\u2019s workload for two weeks to ship a requested fix, he discovered the effort made no difference. The customer still threatened to churn.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a retro, and wouldn\u2019t you know? The person who\u2019s asking for the new request was the new decision maker [we] didn\u2019t even realize existed,\u201d said Kataria, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based <\/span>Centralize<\/span><\/a>, in an interview. \u201cWe missed the fact that the prior person had left, and the context had shifted hands, and no one had tracked that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Centralize
Centralize co-founders Rachit Kataria (left) and William Wang. [courtesy photo]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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That breakdown planted the seed for Centralize, an enterprise sales platform emerging from stealth today alongside a $15 million Series A funding round led by <\/span>New Enterprise Associates<\/span><\/a> (NEA). <\/span><\/p>\n

The financing includes participation from <\/span>Salesforce Ventures<\/span><\/a>,1<\/a> <\/span>Y Combinator<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>20 Sales<\/span><\/a>, Ritual Capital, Adverb Ventures and high-profile angel investors including former <\/span>Slack<\/span><\/a> co-founder <\/span>Stewart Butterfield<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Scott Woody<\/span><\/a>, CEO and founder of <\/span>Metronome<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Combined with a previous $4 million seed round led by Salesforce Ventures, Centralize has now raised $19 million since its 2023 inception to build what Kataria calls a \u201cdeal GPS\u201d for enterprise revenue teams.<\/span><\/p>\n

Engineered by Big Tech vets<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Kataria and co-founder and CTO <\/span>William Wang<\/span><\/a> met more than a decade ago as engineering students at the <\/span>University of Southern California<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both went on to build high-scale products across Big Tech. Kataria served as a founding engineer on Facebook Shops during <\/span>Meta\u2019s<\/span><\/a> e-commerce push during COVID-19, scaling the platform from zero to a quarter billion monthly active users in a year. Wang, meanwhile, created Slack Huddles, building the initial version alongside Slack executives <\/span>Cal Henderson<\/span><\/a> (CTO), <\/span>Noah Weiss<\/span><\/a> (VP of product), and Butterfield (CEO), and later leading engineering and product teams at Slack.<\/span><\/p>\n

After honing their technical chops in big tech, Kataria joined Y Combinator-backed fleet card startup <\/span>AtoB<\/span><\/a> as a product tech lead. It was there, while working closely with go-to-market teams to save that churning enterprise customer, that he recognized a fundamental gap in modern revenue operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just this sea of information that no one had a handle on. The deal was at risk because the relationship is what mattered most, and we didn\u2019t have a handle on it,\u201d Kataria told Crunchbase News in an interview. \u201cOne of the things that we always say is that the one thing AI can\u2019t commoditize is relationships.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Solving the \u2018multi-threading\u2019 problem<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Founded through Y Combinator\u2019s Winter 2024 batch, Centralize aims to fix what Kataria describes as a lack of an actual relationship layer in modern sales platforms.<\/span><\/p>\n

After bringing its primary product to market in December 2024, Centralize focused heavily on \u201cmulti-threading,\u201d or the practice of identifying, engaging, and organizing all necessary stakeholders high and wide within a target company, from procurement and legal up to the C-suite.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather than acting as a static record, Centralize operates as a visual, multiplayer surface centered around automated org charts that function like a map. AI agents analyze first-party data, call recordings, emails, calendar events, and web sources to continuously construct a live picture of key relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a deal GPS,\u201d Kataria explained. \u201cOr like a visual map, in which the people are the map. It\u2019s the puzzle pieces. It\u2019s basically like a landscape of who we know, who\u2019s missing, how we get there, and then it\u2019s the turn-by-turn navigation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Centralize\u2019s AI assistant is named \u201cCentra,\u201d and answers questions such as \u201cWho owns the budget?\u201d or \u201cHow do we approach the CRO?\u201d in seconds, the company claims. It also flags the moment a champion leaves, a new decision-maker joins, or engagement drops on a key deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides proactively flagging missing stakeholders, such as empty leadership seats or unengaged decision-makers, the platform also identifies warm entry points through mutual connections or past company overlaps.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rapid growth and a bottoms-up launch<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Centralize charges enterprise revenue teams based on \u201caccounts under management\u201d with unlimited seats, encouraging cross-functional teams, including account executives, sales development reps, and customer success managers, to collaborate on account maps in real time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The approach is driving rapid momentum. Over the past year, revenue has expanded significantly, driven by adoption among fast-growing enterprise companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSince last year, we\u2019ve\u2026 almost 8xed the company in revenue,\u201d Kataria said, noting that much of that momentum accelerated over recent months.<\/span><\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s client roster features notable tech names, including <\/span>CoreWeave<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Cognition<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Decagon<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Brex<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Webflow<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>LangChain<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>MaintainX<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

To accelerate expansion, Centralize is launching a free, single-player tier alongside its funding news. The move allows individual account executives to sign up, build real-time account maps, and introduce the platform organically to executive leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hilarie Koplow-McAdams<\/span><\/a>, venture partner at NEA, noted that the investment in Centralize was driven by the founders\u2019 \u201cunique\u201d vision and execution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRachit and Will have built something rare: a product that sales teams actually want to use, not just another system of record they\u2019re forced into,\u201d she wrote via email. \u201cWe led Centralize\u2019s Series A because we saw a founding team with an unusually sharp read on how AI changes the day-to-day of enterprise sales.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Koplow-McAdams also noted that buying committees have nearly doubled in size over the last decade. \u201cThe entire revenue tech stack was built around activity capture, rather than navigating buying committees,\u201d she added. \u201cThat\u2019s a structural gap, and it\u2019s only widening as AI raises the stakes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Startups like Centralize that bring AI to bear on enterprise marketing and sales have seen a strong uptick in funding this year, Crunchbase <\/span>data shows<\/span><\/a>, with 2026 <\/span>on pace to beat last year<\/span><\/a>, which was the strongest year for venture investment into startups related to sales, marketing and CRM technology since 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Related Crunchbase query:<\/strong><\/h2>\n