A year ago, Sam Blond left his VC role at Founders Fund after just 18 months, stating that venture capital wasn’t for him and he wanted to return to operating. On Wednesday, he officially unveiled his new startup, Monaco, which he co-founded with his brother Brian Blond—also an ex-sales professional turned VC—and two others: Abishek Viswanathan (former CPO at Apollo and Qualtrics) and Malay Desai (ex-SVP of engineering at Clari). Monaco has raised $35 million through a $10 million seed and $25 million Series A round, both led by Founders Fund with participation from Human Capital. The startup’s AI sales platform has been in private beta and was opened to the public on Wednesday. The Blond brothers, well connected in the industry (Sam was head of sales at Brex), also attracted prominent angel investors including Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, and Greenoaks Capital’s Neil Mehta. What sets Monaco apart in the crowded AI sales tech market is its hybrid model: it combines an AI-native sales platform with experienced human salespeople who monitor and guide the AI’s activities rather than replacing humans entirely. This approach supports seed and Series A startups with an AI-powered CRM and a proprietary prospect database similar to ZoomInfo. Monaco’s AI agents handle email outreach campaigns and follow-ups under expert human supervision, alongside features like meeting note-taking. Monaco aims to automate repetitive sales tasks by building target prospect databases, identifying key decision-makers, sequencing outreach, and scheduling meetings—all orchestrated and executed by the AI agents with human oversight.

The actual customer conversations are conducted by human salespeople, not avatars. This makes Monaco unique among AI sales firms, focusing on augmenting rather than substituting human talent and providing experienced sales resources to early-stage companies unable to hire them directly. The startup competes mainly with HubSpot, which targets affordability for young firms compared to giants like Salesforce. Though Blond didn’t disclose exact pricing, he said Monaco charges a flat fee currently discounted during beta testing. He acknowledges the highly competitive space, with hundreds of sales startups emerging from Y Combinator alone, alongside established firms like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and ZoomInfo rolling out their own AI tools. Blond notes that the current top sales tech platforms were built in a previous era and no newcomer has yet emerged as a clear market leader—no “Cursor for sales” exists yet, referencing the well-known AI coding tool. Monaco aims to become that next market leader, anticipating a major platform shift in sales technology beyond current incumbents. Explaining why he chose this crowded field, Blond says his entire career in sales uniquely qualifies him as a non-technical founder to build a sales technology company. He is clearly enjoying the challenge: Monaco employs about 40 people, mostly career sales professionals, and their office features motivational WWII-era posters with slogans like “Save Startups” and “Build the future with Monaco, ” plus a gong that sounds whenever the AI secures a meeting with a prospect.