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The Finance Base
AI sales coaching

Second Nature raised $12.5M in 2022 to coach salespeople with AI-powered avatars

Second Nature’s January 2022 Series A backed conversational AI that let salespeople practice pitches, demos and objections with virtual avatars. Here is how the product differed from Gong and Chorus, what Zoom’s investment signaled, and how the platform later expanded.

By TheFinanceBase Team 6 min read
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Second Nature announced a $12.5 million Series A on January 12, 2022, alongside the public launch of its conversational-AI sales-coaching platform. signals Venture Capital led the round, joined by StageOne Ventures, Cardumen Capital and Zoom Video Communications through the Zoom Apps Fund. The Tel Aviv company said the financing brought its total funding to $15.5 million.

The product was built for practice before a customer conversation: salespeople could speak with an AI avatar, handle questions and objections, and receive a score without waiting for a manager. That made it different from conversation-intelligence products such as Gong and Chorus, which primarily analyze real calls. Second Nature later expanded its platform and reported a $22 million Series B in a Q4 2025 company update.

What happened on January 12, 2022?

Second Nature, founded in 2018 by Ariel Hitron and Alon Shalita, announced its Series A and product launch together. The company described the round as a $12.5 million investment led by signals Venture Capital, with participation from StageOne Ventures, Cardumen Capital and Zoom’s Apps Fund. Its announcement said total funding had reached $15.5 million.

Detail Reported information
Round $12.5 million Series A
Announcement January 12, 2022
Lead investor signals Venture Capital
Other investors StageOne Ventures, Cardumen Capital and Zoom Apps Fund
Total funding after the round $15.5 million, according to Second Nature
Company Tel Aviv-based Second Nature, founded in 2018

Second Nature’s announcement and VentureBeat’s report provide the contemporaneous funding details.

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Why Zoom’s investment mattered

Zoom invested through the Zoom Apps Fund while also using Second Nature for sales-team training and certification. That made Zoom both a strategic backer and an early enterprise customer. It is evidence of a commercial relationship, not independent proof that the software improves sales results.

What problem was Second Nature addressing?

Large sales organizations must repeatedly train people on changing products, pricing, messaging and compliance requirements. Traditional role-play depends on managers finding time to observe each representative, and informal coaching can vary from one team to another. Distributed teams make that repetition harder.

Second Nature’s proposed answer was structured, repeatable practice with measurable criteria. A company could turn its product information, talk tracks and sales-playbook material into exercises, then let representatives rehearse safely, make mistakes and try again. The aim was to reduce the management time and operational burden associated with coaching—not to eliminate managers.

The investor discussion from signals Venture Capital framed the need around shortening product life cycles and keeping sales teams current. Those are the company and investor’s stated rationale, rather than an independently measured market-size claim.

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How the AI-avatar training worked

  1. Load the organization’s material. Product information, messaging, talk tracks or other playbook content supplied the basis for an exercise.
  2. Start a simulated interaction. A representative spoke with a virtual prospect or customer. The original launch prominently featured an avatar named Jenny.
  3. Handle an open-ended conversation. The avatar could ask questions, respond to answers and raise objections instead of simply following a fixed decision tree.
  4. Receive an evaluation. The system checked whether required topics and messages were covered and returned feedback and a score.
  5. Repeat or certify. Representatives could retry without scheduling another manager session. Managers could assign exercises, review scores, compare performance and use certifications or leaderboards.

The 2022 product description referred to natural-language understanding, natural-language processing, speech recognition and conversational AI. The practical promise was immediate feedback on a spoken pitch or conversation, not merely a quiz about product knowledge. Second Nature’s release and VentureBeat’s coverage describe that workflow.

Training modes in the original product

  • Live conversational practice with an AI avatar.
  • Slide-presentation simulations.
  • Recorded pitches with automated scoring.
  • Product-demo practice, including screen sharing.
  • Courses assembled from videos and sales-enablement materials.
  • Manager-assigned tasks, certifications and leaderboards.
  • LMS integration for assigning or scheduling training.

These modes addressed onboarding and readiness as well as individual selling skills. A representative could practice a discovery conversation, then demonstrate a product or deliver a presentation under the same training program.

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Second Nature versus Gong, Chorus and enablement suites

The key distinction is where the tool sits in the sales process. Second Nature was designed primarily for rehearsal and certification. Gong- and Chorus-style systems primarily inspect real customer conversations to identify patterns, risks and coaching opportunities. An LMS or sales-enablement platform distributes content and tracks assignments, while a human manager supplies context and judgment.

Category Primary moment Core function
Second Nature Before or during training Simulated role-play, practice, scoring and certification
Gong or Chorus-style conversation intelligence During or after real calls Recording and analysis of customer conversations
LMS or sales-enablement system Across a training program Content distribution, assignments and completion tracking
Human coaching Before, during and after deals Contextual judgment, strategy and feedback

These categories can be complementary. A company might certify messaging in Second Nature, inspect field calls in a conversation-intelligence system, and have a manager connect both sources to account strategy. Second Nature’s original positioning was practice before the real conversation, not post-call analytics.

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Customers and evidence available in 2022

Second Nature said the platform had been commercially deployed by companies including Zoom. VentureBeat reported thousands of users across Zoom, SAP, Check Point Software and Lookout. Those figures were company or publication-reported customer information, not an audited market measurement.

Current company materials discuss customers and case studies including Oracle NetSuite, SAP Academy, GoHealth and Check Point. The Oracle NetSuite case study and SAP Academy case study are vendor-published accounts. They can show how deployments were described, but they do not establish that the same results will occur at every organization.

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What has changed since the Series A?

Second Nature’s current product is broader than the original Jenny-centered launch. The company now advertises role plays for discovery calls, cold calls and objection handling; video-avatar conversations; multi-persona meetings; and AI-generated scenarios created from uploaded material or voice commands. It also markets Deal Coach for coaching on live opportunities rather than only simulated conversations.

Its current pages describe integrations with LMS, CRM, SSO, SCIM and conference tools, along with use cases in sales, customer support, enablement, learning and development, and service teams. Language support is described as more than 25 or 30 languages on different current pages, so buyers should confirm the supported languages and capabilities for the edition they are considering.

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In a Q4 2025 update, Second Nature said it had raised a $22 million Series B. That is a later financing event and should not be confused with the $12.5 million Series A announced in 2022.

Where AI role-play fits—and where it may not

Potentially strong fit

  • Hundreds or thousands of sales, support or service employees.
  • Frequent changes to products, pricing, messaging or compliance requirements.
  • Distributed teams that cannot schedule repeated live role-play.
  • Limited manager capacity for one-to-one practice.
  • Standardized messaging that can be converted into explicit evaluation criteria.
  • A need to document completion, scores or certifications.

Questions and trade-offs for buyers

  • Rubric quality: Scores may measure whether defined topics were covered more reliably than trust-building, timing, originality or account politics.
  • Rubric gaming: Representatives may optimize for the score instead of developing flexible selling judgment.
  • Content maintenance: Someone must update scenarios and evaluation criteria when products or policies change.
  • Speech and language accuracy: Accents, noisy environments, accessibility needs and unexpected questions can affect recognition or scoring.
  • Human oversight: AI practice does not replace subject-matter experts or managers who understand a deal’s context.
  • Privacy and controls: Buyers should validate retention, recordings, model behavior, hosting region and audit requirements.

Second Nature’s enterprise page claims SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA compliance, and says customer data is not used to train large language models. These are vendor claims that procurement teams should verify against current certificates, contract terms and the exact services purchased.

Pricing and buying path

Second Nature does not publish a public list price. Its enterprise page directs prospects toward a demo, and its terms say the company may offer a free, no-obligation trial subject to its conditions. Prospects should therefore expect a sales conversation covering scope, integrations, implementation and pricing rather than a simple self-serve subscription.

Before a purchase, ask who owns scenario creation, how rubrics are validated, how scoring errors are handled, whether scores connect to real sales outcomes, and what happens when messaging changes. Those answers often matter more than the avatar’s visual realism.

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Bottom line

Second Nature’s $12.5 million Series A funded a practice-first approach to sales coaching: conversational AI allowed representatives to rehearse pitches, demos and objections repeatedly, while managers reviewed structured feedback and focused on higher-value coaching. The company’s later expansion and reported Series B show that the platform moved beyond the original avatar launch, but the central distinction remains: Second Nature prepares people for conversations, whereas Gong- and Chorus-style products primarily analyze conversations that already happened.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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