Announcing Symphony42 Corporation – the World’s First AI Lead Generation Platform

Sean Fenlon

(Originally published April 2, 2022 on LinkedIn)

Many industry analysts define Lead Generation (aka “Lead Gen”) as the action or process of identifying and cultivating prospective new customers for a business or a sales organization. Generating sales leads has been a concept long before the birth of the consumer Internet in 1995 with the Netscape IPO. However, the Internet completely transformed Lead Generation beyond anything ever observed before the Internet. Lead Generation businesses immediately blossomed across the Internet. They began slashing their business-clients’ customer acquisition costs (CAC) and marketing costs by delivering qualified sales prospects using performance-based pricing models while simultaneously siphoning conventional ad spending and marketing budgets from traditional offline media as they grew. Industry/vertical/category, product or service, it made little difference – the Internet quickly became the SUPREME Lead Generation channel for ALL B2C sales organizations.

In 2007, I wrote in a blog post that “Lead Generation is NOT a Value Proposition unto itself, and Lead Generation is NOT an Industry. Rather, Lead Generation is a subset of the ADVERTISING industry.”

In the 21st century, Lead Generation has evolved to represent a performance-based delivery model and performance-based pricing model of advertising/marketing dollars spent by an organization attempting to acquire new customers/clients:

http://www.seanfenlon.com/2007/online-performance-based-marketing-overview-part-i/

I have been described by many as a Lead Gen veteran. That is probably a fair characterization. I was buying online ads and driving consumer traffic to Internet forms as early as 1997 – 25+ years ago. Also, in 2001, I was the co-owner of an Internet Lead Generation company with a business model very similar to LendingTree’s. TheLoanPage.com grew to over $12 Million in revenue and over $3 Million in EBITDA with less than ten employees before Battery Ventures acquired the company at the end of 2003 – often cited as the first private exit of an online Lead Generation Company EVER :-O

In 2004, I was the Founder & CEO of DoublePositive – the world’s first LIVE lead platform. In addition, DoublePositive was the INVENTOR of the Live Call Transfer Lead.

In the mid-2000’s, I used this single slide to illustrate the evolution of performance-based pricing models:

DoublePositive Evolution Slide

DoublePositive quickly raised three rounds of Venture Capital with just this one slide. DoublePositive delivered live consumers who were genuinely-interested and further-qualified than conventional/legacy lead gen campaigns were capable of doing. The company serviced multiple lead gen verticals and sold to lead buyers of all sizes. DoublePositive used live human call center agents to confirm a consumer’s intent and qualifications before delivering the live consumer to a sales professional within a sales organization.

10+ years later, the DoublePositive platform blossomed into a multi-vertical online marketing and lead gen powerhouse:

DoublePositive Online Marketing Network Powerhouse

DoublePositive was acquired in 2015 and is still going strong today.

Symphony42 is reproducing this DoublePositive business model but replacing human call center agents speaking live to consumers with Conversational AI sessions communicating with the consumers. AI software will yield higher performance and more consistent/predictable outcomes at a fraction of the cost of a live human. Better performance and lower costs is a winning innovation – enabled by modern Conversational AI tech that is just beginning to blossom.

Industry analysts expect the Conversational AI market to surpass $13 Billion by 2028 and grow by more than 20% per year. In 2022, industry analysts expect the Lead Generation ecosystem to be an 11-figure market and continues to grow more than 20% per year. Symphony42 is the world’s first business at the intersection of Lead Generation and Conversational AI.

Symphony42 is the world’s first business at the intersection of Lead Generation and Conversational AI.

Symphony42 Business Model Diagram
Symphony42 Business Model Diagram

Please note the uniqueness of the Symphony42 business model in the diagram – all consumer-initiated inbound, all the time.

…all consumer-initiated inbound, all the time.

On the left of the diagram – the “Supply Side” – consumers will see ads and offers with a call-to-action that prompts the consumer to inquire and express interest in a product or service via initiating an SMS message or via initiating a call. These inbound inquiries will trigger a Conversational AI session with the consumer. The consumer will believe that they are communicating with a live human, but it will be a virtual agent who will engage the consumer to ensure that they are genuinely-interested and qualified, and also ready to speak live with a human sales representative from the call buyers on the “Demand Side.” Thus, both steps of engagement are initiated by the consumer, making the consumer journey 100% TCPA-compliant and will result in live consumers with the highest level of “intent” to convert into a sale for the call buyers on the “Demand Side.”

Thus, both steps of engagement are initiated by the consumer, making the consumer journey 100% TCPA-compliant and will result in live consumers with the highest level of “intent” to convert into a sale for the call buyers on the “Demand Side.”

Symphony42 will work with the top-tier traffic supply partners, the leading Conversational AI platforms, and lead-buying/call-buying sales organizations of all sizes in all the top lead gen verticals and categories. If you or your organization falls into any of these groups, please contact me – I would like to explore ways to work together.

Pre-Seed Investors:

Symphony42 recently closed on a Pre-Seed round of funding from wonderful and amazing angel investors and entrepreneurs in my personal network:

  • Bob Glazer (Founder & Chairman of Acceleration Partners and Best-selling Author)
  • Greg Cangialosi (Managing Partner – Olive Ventures & Founder of Blue Sky Factory)
  • John Akkara (CEO Smoothstack)
  • Pete Kim (MightyHive Founder & Executive Director at S4 Capital Group)
  • Ross Shanken (Jornaya Founder)
  • Sam Melamed (National Care Dental CEO & Founder of Insurance Forums)
  • Sean Hanlon (Founder & CEO of Vestbridge & Hanlon Investment Management)
  • Stein Kretsinger (Former Investor/Board Member DoublePositive, Former Advertising.com Executive, and Former EIR for Battery Ventures)
  • Sumeet Goel (CEO Goel Management)

Symphony42 Advisors:

Also, Symphony42 has assembled many top industry executives, Internet/Tech Founders, and thought leaders in the Lead Gen and Performance Marketing space as Advisors:

Symphony42 Board of Directors:

Symphony42 Founding Team/Co-founders:

5 seasoned veterans of Lead Generation, Real-time Data Management, and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning make up the members of the Symphony42 Founding team. We are excited to announce each of them in the coming weeks and months.

What’s Next?

We plan to launch our MVP product in Q2 2022 and generate meaningful revenue before raising a full institutional Seed Round of funding later in 2022.

Please connect with us on Social Media:

Our B2B corporate website is www.Symphony42.com. There is only a splash/landing page on the domain at the time of this post, but we plan on launching our complete website in the coming weeks.

Also, please connect with us live and in-person at the leading Lead Generation tradeshows:

Finally, a special thanks to the folks who I’m expecting to do a commercial deal with in this Pre-Seed stage of Symphony42:

  • AC Evans
  • Adam Young
  • Anders Jones
  • Andy Aronoff
  • Atul Patel
  • Brendan Mahoney
  • Hunter Ingram
  • Jeff Shi
  • Joey Liner
  • John Kline
  • Jordan Staab
  • JT Benton
  • Matt Conlin
  • Matt Schubert
  • Matt Tillman
  • Roman Meytin
  • Sean-Reed McGhee
  • Steve Doumar
  • Tighe Wilhelmy