A new startup founded by two former sales leaders at Chicago-based Jellyvision wants to help companies rethink their revenue strategies and drive more sales.
Mud City, founded just last month, is a sales and revenue operations agency that helps Chicago companies build stable foundations for growing their sales. "Foundation" being the operative word for the startup, as it not only helps companies completely build or rebuild their revenue engines, but its name pays homage to one of Chicago's earliest nicknames.
In the city's early days, Chicago was at the same level as Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. When it rained, streets would be filled with mud, giving Chicago the moniker of "Mud City." Homes had to actually be raised in the late 1850s to rise above the mud.
With an eye on building a solid foundation, Mud City says it works closely with companies to understand their customers and build long-term processes, rather than band-aid solutions to boost revenue. The company said it will often serve as the entire revenue function for small startups, setting up all of the sales processes from end-to-end. It will then work to help companies bring on a head of sales when the time is right.
Founded by Jessica Watts, the former VP of sales at Jellyvision, and Jeremy von Halle, Jellyvision's former VP of revenue operations, Mud City counts Chicago startups like Rheaply and GoLogic among its clients.
"Oftentimes, people forget just how difficult sales is," von Halle said. "It's extremely hard and it's extremely demanding."
Watts and von Halle met at Jellyvision in 2016 and worked to grow the company's employee communication software, called ALEX.
"It was like a startup in a startup," Watts said. "We were scaling a piece of technology basically from scratch."
The experience at Jellyvision gave them the tools they needed to bring similar sales strategies to other companies.
Today, sales strategy is an even more pressing issue for startups as the Covid-19 crisis continues, requiring companies to have an even stronger foundation as they look to boost their bottom line.
"Companies are really going to have to readjust their expectations for the year, and put a lot more thought into how they are going to achieve their goals for 2020," von Halle said.
