Driven Raises €1.5M to Reinvent Sales Compensation & Performance with AI
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We are thrilled to announce a major milestone in our journey. Driven has successfully raised €1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to scale our AI-powered platform for dynamic sales compensation. This is a huge step forward in our mission to transform how sales teams are motivated and rewarded.
This funding round was led by the venture capital firm Pitchdrive, with significant participation from NewSchool VC. We are also incredibly proud to have the backing of some of Belgium's most respected tech entrepreneurs, including Jeroen De Wit of Teamleader, the Henchman team (Gilles Mattelin, Jorn Vanysacker, and Wouter Van Respaille), and Matthias Geeroms from Lighthouse. Their belief in our vision reinforces our commitment to solving a long-standing industry problem.
For decades, sales compensation has been a source of frustration for both managers and their teams. Variable pay is a standard component for about half of all salespeople, yet the methods for managing it are often stuck in the past. Most companies still rely on complex, error-prone spreadsheets that are difficult to maintain and update.
This outdated approach leads to several key challenges:
- Delayed Updates: Commission calculations often happen weeks or even months after a deal closes, creating a disconnect between effort and reward.
- Lack of Transparency: Sales reps are frequently left in the dark about their progress toward goals and what their potential earnings are. This uncertainty can be a powerful demotivator.
- Misaligned Incentives: Static plans struggle to adapt to changing market conditions or business priorities, leading to incentives that don't drive the right behaviors.
- Administrative Burden: Managers spend countless hours manually calculating payouts and resolving disputes, taking time away from coaching and strategy.
These issues don't just affect morale; they directly impact performance and revenue. When motivation wanes and incentives are unclear, sales performance suffers.
How Driven Changes the Game with AI
Driven was founded in early 2025 by Ludovic Diercxsens, Andres De Jonge, and Tom De Kooning to tackle these problems head-on. Our platform moves sales compensation out of static spreadsheets and into a dynamic, intelligent, and transparent system.
By connecting directly to your company's CRM, such as HubSpot or Salesforce, Driven provides a single source of truth for all sales performance and commission data.
Here’s how our solution empowers your entire sales organization:
Real-Time Performance Tracking
With Driven, the days of waiting for end-of-quarter reports are over. Sales representatives get a personal dashboard that shows their progress toward targets in real time. They can see exactly how each activity and closed deal impacts their earnings, providing immediate positive reinforcement and a clear understanding of what they need to do to succeed.
Automated and Smart Commission Plans
Our AI-native platform automates the entire commission process. Managers can set up fair and transparent compensation plans based on historical data, industry benchmarks, and live performance metrics. The AI assistant helps create smart incentive structures that align individual goals with broader company objectives, ensuring everyone is working toward the same outcome.
"Driven is the tool that motivates sales teams through smart incentives," says our CEO, Ludovic Diercxsens. "By making goals visible and dividing them fairly, everyone in the company knows exactly what they’re working toward. That clarity instantly lifts motivation."
Improved CRM Data Quality
A common pain point for sales leaders is poor data quality in the CRM. Inaccurate or incomplete data leads to flawed forecasting and misguided strategies. Driven solves this by directly linking commission payouts to the data logged in the CRM.
As CTO Andres De Jonge explains, "Better data automatically means better sales. When reps know that their pay depends on clean CRM inputs, they become much more disciplined." This creates a virtuous cycle where better data leads to better insights, which in turn drives better performance.
Our Journey and What's Next
Driven is the seventh startup to emerge from the Ghent-based venture builder StarApps, which has a track record of building successful companies like Bizzy and FixForm. We are proud to already be working with early adopters such as the cybersecurity firm Aikido.
With this new €1.5 million in funding, we are ready to accelerate our growth. Our primary focus will be on expanding our team, doubling down on product development, and onboarding more customers across Europe. We have an ambitious goal to reach €1 million in revenue by 2026, and this investment provides the fuel to get us there.
We are building a future where sales compensation is no longer a source of confusion and frustration, but a powerful driver of performance and motivation. We believe that by providing clarity, transparency, and intelligent automation, we can help companies unlock the full potential of their sales teams.
Thank you to our investors, early customers, and the entire Driven team for being part of this incredible journey. The best is yet to come.
Conclusion
Driven is setting a new standard for sales compensation by harnessing the power of AI. Their platform directly addresses some of the most persistent problems in the industry—delayed payouts, lack of transparency, and CRM data challenges—while empowering sales teams and managers to achieve more. As they expand across Europe and continue to innovate, Driven is well-positioned to become a leader in smart sales compensation and help businesses unlock greater motivation and growth within their sales organizations.
FAQ
What Ops Means in Business
“Ops” is simply short for operations. In a business context, operations refer to the systems, processes, workflows, and structures that keep a company running on a day to day basis. At its core, Ops answers one fundamental question: How does work actually get done inside the company? It includes everything from the following:
- How leads are managed
- How projects are delivered
- How teams collaborate
- How data is tracked and used
- How customers receive your product or service
If strategy is about deciding what a business wants to achieve, Ops is about ensuring it actually happens consistently, efficiently, and at scale.
AI vs. Manual Quota Setting: Which Actually Gets Better Results?
Quota setting might seem like a simple task of assigning targets, but its impact goes far beyond just numbers. It influences how your entire revenue engine operates, from planning to performance to payouts. Here’s how it directly affects your business:
- Revenue predictability: Well set quotas create stable and predictable revenue. Poorly set quotas lead to inconsistent performance and missed targets.
- Rep motivation and retention: Fair, achievable quotas keep reps engaged. Unrealistic or uneven targets lead to frustration and higher churn.
- Compensation accuracy: Since payouts depend on quotas, incorrect targets create confusion, disputes, and manual commission tracking challenges across teams.
- Forecasting confidence: Leadership relies on quotas to plan revenue. If quotas are off, forecasts become unreliable.
And most importantly: If reps don’t believe their quota reflects real opportunity, they stop taking it seriously. And when trust drops, performance follows. That’s why quota setting should never operate in isolation. It needs to be tightly connected to your sales compensation tool and commission logic, so everything stays aligned, transparent, and easy to understand.
Sales Compensation in B2B vs B2C: Key Differences
Before diving into compensation, it’s important to understand the structural differences.
- B2B (Business to Business) sales involve selling products or services to organisations rather than individual consumers. These deals are typically higher in value and require approval from multiple stakeholders, such as finance, procurement, and leadership teams. As a result, sales cycles are longer and more complex. Sales representatives often take on a consultative role, focusing on understanding business needs, building relationships, and guiding clients through detailed, strategic decision making processes.
- B2C (Business to Consumer) sales, on the other hand, focus on selling directly to individual customers. These transactions are usually lower in value but occur at a much higher frequency. The decision making process is simpler and often driven by emotion, convenience, or immediate need. Sales cycles are short, and success depends on speed, customer experience, and conversion efficiency, making volume and consistency the key drivers of performance.
These differences are not just operational; they directly influence what behaviours you need to incentivise.
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