From Side Projects to Major Funding
Starting as two ambitious UC Berkeley students experimenting with everything from virtual billboards in Minecraft to AI website builders, founders Neil Tewari and James Jiao never expected their quest for product-market fit would lead them to transform business marketing itself. Their big break came not from success, but from frustration — wrestling daily with outdated, disconnected tools that slowed their growth and buried great marketing ideas beneath technical bottlenecks.
After listening to marketers who echoed these pain points, they shifted focus and built something new from scratch: a platform designed to eliminate the friction in modern marketing, not just patch over it. Their relentless drive and fresh perspective paid off in spectacular fashion.
A Landmark $28 Million Series A Raise
In July 2025, Conversion secured a stunning $28 million Series A investment, with leadership from Abstract Ventures and participation from HOF Capital, True Ventures, Antler, and angels from OpenAI and leading companies in the marketing and AI world. This significant capital injection brings Conversion’s total funding to $30 million and cements its status as a key innovator in the rapidly evolving marketing automation sector.
What Sets Conversion Apart
Conversion isn’t just another marketing tool — it’s a growth engine purpose-built for B2B teams who want flexibility and speed without complexity. Here are some defining features:
Drag-and-drop email builder that protects brand integrity.
Magic Blocks leveraging real-time data like product usage and company profiles to auto-personalize messaging.
Real-time CRM integrations and enrichment that never miss a beat.
No-code workflows for effortless automation across the customer journey.
Dynamic audience segmentation that simply works.
With Conversion, companies no longer need a battalion of operations specialists or coding expertise to run smart, adaptive campaigns.
Customer Success and Rapid Growth
Conversion’s approach—building hand-in-hand with over 200 marketers and integrating direct feedback—helped the company find genuine product-market fit, often before the team even realized it. The platform’s adoption by over 4,000 companies, including tech leaders like OpenAI, Clay, and Paraform, propelled revenues to nearly eight figures in just two years, making Conversion one of the fastest-growing startups in its space.
Looking Forward: Building the Future, Not Just Chasing It
Conversion’s founders are using this new funding to double down on product, engineering, and customer-driven design. The mission is bold: build the best modern marketing platform in the world, freeing marketers to experiment, personalize, and scale growth—without workarounds or technical headaches.
New hires are coming across engineering, design, and go-to-market roles as Conversion builds a platform that feels approachable and inspiring. The journey from student side projects to multi-million dollar raises reflects not only grit, but the vision to turn real industry pain points into tools that make work genuinely easier.
Conversion’s story is a reminder that sometimes, true innovation happens when you reimagine the basics with fresh eyes—and team up with marketers who demand more. With new funding in hand and a commitment to building tools that actually work, Conversion is leading the next chapter of marketing automation, where experimentation and customer-centricity drive the journey forward.
