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Live Chat Software Grew Up and Learned to Sell
Eight companies - from a free widget called tawk.to to Salesforce's new AI seller Piper - are fighting over the little box in the corner of your screen. The chat bubble stopped answering questions and started closing deals.
Birdeye and Qualified Took Opposite Roads to the Same AI Future
One crossed $100 million in revenue while barely touching venture money. The other got scooped up by Salesforce. Both are betting the future of marketing belongs to software that works on its own.
Kraig Swensrud
Kraig Swensrud is the co-founder and CEO of Qualified, the AI-powered pipeline generation platform built natively on Salesforce. A serial entrepreneur and former Salesforce CMO, he has founded three companies - Kieden (acquired by Salesforce in 2006), GetFeedback (acquired by Campaign Monitor in 2014, later by SurveyMonkey), and Qualified (acquired by Salesforce in April 2026 for an estimated multi-hundred million valuation). At Qualified, he built the category of conversational marketing and agentic AI for B2B enterprises, raising $163M in funding and growing to ~260 employees before the acquisition completed a full-circle return to Salesforce.
Sean Whiteley
Sean Whiteley is a three-time enterprise software founder and President of Qualified, the AI pipeline generation platform he co-built with long-time partner Kraig Swensrud. Having navigated every major tech platform shift - from on-premise to cloud to AI - across a 30-year career that includes stints at AOL, PwC, PeopleSoft, webMethods, and Salesforce, Sean brings rare pattern recognition to go-to-market strategy. His companies have a track record of building deep inside the Salesforce ecosystem and exiting to strategic acquirers: Kieden to Salesforce (2006), GetFeedback to SurveyMonkey (2019), and now Qualified to Salesforce again (2025), in a deal that cements his legacy as one of enterprise software's most consistent repeat founders.