Updated December 9, 2024.
Walnut, a leader in B2B sales that became famous for its online movement “We Are Prospects,” today announced that the company has appointed San Francisco-based executive Eric Anderson as its new CEO.
This follows Co-Founder & CEO Yoav Vilner’s decision to transition to a strategic board role and move the company’s leadership to the West Coast, ahead of the company’s next phases of growth.
Launched in early 2020, Walnut has pioneered a new tech category known as interactive demos. The emerging industry has raised hundreds of millions in venture capital and attracted top global companies as customers. Walnut has been recognized as the “#1 top startup” by LinkedIn, a “top 100 workplace” by Dun & Bradstreet, a “top 100 cloud company” by Accel, and has received numerous other prestigious accolades.
Walnut has started its journey with 700 companies on a waitlist, aiming to empower sales teams to deliver great demos independently, without relying on back-end teams. Today, it boasts a portfolio of many hundreds of customers and diverse use cases spanning sales, marketing, and product marketing. The customer base also includes various industries.
“Walnut has been an incredible journey,” says departing CEO and Founder, Yoav Vilner. “After nearly 5 years of rapid growth, creating a new category in a market that we had to both create and educate, and seeing the value our product has delivered to countless Fortune 500 companies and inspired vendors, I sought the board’s blessing to work together to find a new U.S.-based leader for the company. I will remain in an advisory role on the company’s board to continue driving the company’s future success. We couldn’t be luckier to welcome an industry leader such as Eric Anderson, who will be able to take us to the next phases of growth.”
“I am honored and thrilled to step into the role of CEO at Walnut. This company has a rich history of innovation and a passionate team dedicated to delivering exceptional value to our customers, partners, and stakeholders”, said Eric Anderson. “As we look to the future, I am incredibly optimistic about the opportunities ahead. Walnut is uniquely positioned to drive meaningful growth and to make a lasting impact in enhancing and automating the sales process. Together with our talented team, I am committed to building on the strong foundation already in place and accelerating the momentum toward an even brighter future. Our focus will remain on innovation and customer excellence, and I am eager to lead Walnut into its next chapter of success”.
“We are grateful for Yoav’s stewardship and guidance at Walnut over the past several years, and are incredibly excited to welcome Eric as new CEO. Eric brings a wealth of go-to-market expertise that will be invaluable as Walnut scales to new heights,” says Jake Storm, General Partner at Felicis.
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Walnut bio
Walnut.io is a first-of-its-kind platform that makes the sales demo process seamless and automated. Walnut’s solution streamlines the process by placing full control back in the hands of the GTM team. By collecting insights and critical data, GTM teams can now focus on the exact needs of their prospects, significantly improving their prospects’ experience. The company was founded in 2020, has raised $56M in VC funding, and is based globally. It was also named “#1 Startup by LinkedIn,” alongside dozens of accolades.
Eric Anderson bio
Most recently Anderson served as President of Mindtickle where he oversaw all aspects of their GTM Operations including Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Revenue Operations, Enablement, Partnerships and Corporate Development. Prior to this, Anderson’s deep experience includes successful stints as the CRO at Optimizely, Spredfast, ReturnPath and Nuance Communications as the Vice President of Worldwide Sales. In these roles, he successfully created teams to accelerate company growth while deepening relationships with customers to ensure they saw the best value from their implementations.
