Proton.ai

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Founder: Benj Cohen
Founding: 2018
Mission: Optimize distributors’ sales operations
Employees: 50+ Employees (68% Local)
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Series A & $20M raised
Investors: Felicis Ventures, Battery Ventures, Abstract Ventures, MSC Industrial Direct, J Ventures, and Godard Abel (CEO of G2) & Ray Grady (CEO of Workspace)
Key Customers: R.S. Hughes, ORS Nasco, MSC, BPI
Glassdoor Rating: 4.4
Valuation (estimated): $100M – $300M (assuming average equity dilution in the Q1 ‘22 Series A fundraise)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!

Proton.ai is redefining the way distributors use CRM, bringing an industry stuck in spreadsheets into the future. The distribution industry is massive, touching nearly every vertical (HVAC, electrical, industrial, automotive, construction, janitorial, and more). But when it comes to technology, distributors have been left behind. Today, more than 30% of distributors with over $100M in revenue still don’t use a CRM, and many others are dissatisfied with the ones they have. Even billion-dollar distributors with hundreds of thousands of SKUs and thousands of customers are still running on gut instinct, fragmented reports, and outdated CRMs.

Benj Cohen first saw the opportunity to use AI to solve the challenges distributors face while growing up in his family’s business, Benco Dental—the largest privately held dental distributor in the U.S. Founded by his great-grandfather and now led by his dad, Chuck Cohen, Benco was moving millions of products, but sales reps struggled to answer critical questions like: What are my biggest opportunities? Which accounts are at risk of switching to a competitor? What should I pitch to this customer? Instead of uncovering new opportunities, reps relied on intuition and routine, selling more of what customers were already buying and simply taking customer orders..

While studying Applied Math at Harvard, Benj began developing AI solutions to help Benco Dental make sense of its complex sales data. The goal was to make the sales team smarter about what to cross-sell and upsell. That early research evolved into Proton.ai—a platform designed to turn massive volumes of data into actionable insights for sales teams: who to call and what to sell.

Today, Proton is a full CRM system built to give sales teams the answers they need in seconds, whether they’re in the field or at their desk. The software ranks accounts by opportunity size, shows reps who to call, surfaces cross-sell recommendations automatically, and flags changes in customer buying behavior before revenue slips away. Proton customer R.S. Hughes, for example, manages 900,000 SKUs across 60,000 customers. That’s a lot of data for sales reps to make sense of—and the company is hiring new reps all the time. For companies like R.S. Hughes, having a system that can identify top opportunities, spot changes in buying patterns, and recommend next best actions for the sales team is a game-changer.

The software actually works. Distributors using Proton see an average of 2.6x sales growth in their first year and up to 11x ROI. Adoption is high—some teams report 80%+ of their reps actively using the platform, a level of engagement that’s rare for any CRM, but especially rare for an industry that’s historically resistant to technology.

Beyond helping sales reps sell more, Proton helps break down communication silos. Sales teams can see each other’s activities without manually entering data, and inside and outside reps have a clear view of what’s happening at the account level across teams.

As Proton scales, the next major innovation on the horizon is an AI-powered sales assistant called Pronto. Launching soon, Pronto will act as a real-time co-pilot for sales teams—surfacing insights ahead of meetings, drafting personalized emails, and generating real-time recommendations based on customer data. Instead of spending hours sifting through spreadsheets and reports, reps and their managers will have the answers they need in seconds.

Proton is also about to release Proton BI—a self-serve business intelligence tool embedded directly inside the CRM. Proton BI will give sales leaders and executives the power to analyze trends, visualize sales performance, and dig deeper into the data that drives their business, all without relying on external BI tools or analysts.

After fully pivoting to CRM in 2024, Proton’s growth has taken off with the CRM business growing >100% YoY. Entering 2025, Proton has scaled to over 50 employees and continues to demonstrate category-leading SaaS metrics. With a growing list of enterprise customers and strong momentum, Proton is rapidly becoming the go-to CRM provider for distributors looking to modernize and drive smarter, data-driven sales growth.

The team is growing too. Proton is hiring ambitious leaders in sales and marketing, engineering, and customer success to join them at their Boston HQ in the CIC (where HubSpot got its start!). For a team that’s been building AI long before ChatGPT made it mainstream, Proton’s focus on the distribution market is creating a wave of momentum that shows no signs of slowing down.

For distributors, the days of operating in the dark are over. Proton is turning data into insights, insights into actions, and actions into revenue growth.

Proton is backed by Felicis Ventures, Battery Ventures, Abstract Ventures, and J Ventures.

Operators to Know (Locally):

My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Proton team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally

Key Roles To Be Hired:

If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:

  • Could you share some details about the onboarding process & training?
  • What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team toward 100 employees?
  • What is the long term vision for the company?
  • What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2025 // teams that need the most help?

We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Proton.ai you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more distributors into the AI era. All consumers applaud your efforts. See you around town!

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