David Walker, Co-founder and CEO of Spara – Interview Series

David Walker, Co-founder and CEO of Spara, has built his career at the intersection of creativity, innovation, and technology. His entrepreneurial journey began in high school, where he sold oil paintings and photographs at craft fairs, sparking a passion for building meaningful ventures. While studying at Yale, he joined his first startup and discovered his drive for product development and marketing. After graduation, he co-founded TripleMint, a tech-powered real estate firm that grew to over 350 employees before being acquired by The Agency. Guided by a belief in creativity, perseverance, and the power of human connection, Walker now focuses on shaping the future of AI-driven business operations at Spara.

Spara is a New York–based AI platform transforming how go-to-market teams operate. The company provides a no-code GTM agent system that automates lead engagement, qualification, and conversion across chat, email, and voice channels. By training on each client’s data and brand voice, Spara’s AI agents deliver personalized, accurate interactions that align with enterprise standards for security and compliance. Integrated with major CRM and workflow tools, the platform enables organizations to scale sales and marketing efforts, streamline operations, and accelerate revenue growth through intelligent automation.

You’ve had a remarkable entrepreneurial journey – from building Triplemint into a 350-person company to now founding Spara. What inspired you to transition from real estate technology to tackling AI-driven inbound sales?

I’ve always been drawn to building solutions for two-sided problems. At Triplemint, we built tech to make real estate better for both clients and agents – because solving problems for both sides made the industry more efficient. I picked up the phone myself and talked to countless clients, and ran agent sales training to get an in-the-weeds sense of the challenges and opportunities on each side.

That experience stuck with me. After selling Triplemint, I wanted to build something that solved another high-impact problem. When I met my co-founder, Zander Pease – who started at Union Square Ventures and later was the technical co-founder of Nomad Health – we decided to go straight to one of the most fascinating two-sided problems of all – sales.

The common thread was clear: companies need to engage buyers more quickly, more personally, and at massive scale the moment they show interest. While buyers want to get instant answers, have more valuable conversations, and spend less time on procurement to find the right solutions. That insight led to Spara – short for ‘sales performance and revenue acceleration’ – which helps companies engage leads instantly, in the right tone and voice of their brand.

We launched by fixing the inbound sales funnel, and now we’re expanding that same idea across the full sales journey – helping teams move faster from first touch through close.

Spara’s mission centers on redefining how companies capture inbound demand by focusing on engagement rather than outbound automation. What personal or professional experiences shaped that vision?

When we started Spara we talked to many GTM leaders to understand exactly where they had big problems worth solving. We saw that teams lose momentum not because they lack opportunity, but because they can’t act on it quickly enough.

Spara was built to close that gap. Our goal isn’t to replace sales teams or over-automate their work – it’s to help them operate at the speed of buyer intent. Whether that’s an inbound lead, an active deal, or an existing customer, our AI listens, qualifies, and responds in seconds while staying true to the company’s voice.

Can you walk us through how Spara’s chat, voice, and email agents work together in real time to qualify and convert leads?

Spara is a unified platform for AI agents across chat, voice, and email – so whether a buyer messages you on your site, replies to an email, or calls in, they’re interacting with the same underlying system.

Each agent does what a great sales rep would – greet prospects, answer questions, qualify leads, and book meetings – only faster. The difference is speed and consistency. Our AI agents respond within seconds, 24/7, ensuring every high-intent visitor gets an immediate, on-brand experience that moves the conversation forward.

Beyond inbound, we’ve built a full GTM agent platform – extending this same speed and precision across the full sales funnel.

Spara emphasizes building private, customer-specific models. How do you ensure these models reflect a company’s unique brand voice and sales funnel while maintaining data security?

Every customer gets their own secure instance of Spara trained entirely on their data – from brand voice and qualification rules to tone and timing. Instead of relying on a generic model, each deployment is purpose-built around the customer’s specific sales process and approved parameters.

Teams have full visibility and control into how their agents operate. GTM leaders can define what qualifies a lead, how follow-ups are phrased, and what tone best represents the company. It’s enterprise-grade AI, but with the precision and safety that complex sales environments demand.

Many conversational AI systems struggle with tone and timing – two key factors in sales success. How does your technology address these nuances?

Tone and timing are everything in sales. An answer that’s technically correct but emotionally off will lose trust, and a message that comes too late will lose the deal. This is one of the reasons we started Spara in the first place. Humans are amazing at building deep connections on scheduled calls, but not for handling thousands of conversations in real-time 24/7.

Spara’s system is built to understand what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. We combine LLM intelligence with structured sales data – things like funnel stages, qualification criteria, and historical response patterns. Each deployment learns from real buyer interactions, improving continuously while maintaining brand consistency.

Early results with Rho showed impressive conversion rates – 90 meetings in 30 days with a 50% conversion. What are some of the key learnings from those early deployments?

Rho’s team has been a great example of what happens when AI and human reps are aligned. What we saw there – and across other customers like MarketMan, Jericho Security, and TinyMCE – is that speed-to-lead is the single biggest driver of conversion.

Conversion rates increase tenfold when companies respond within one minute, but drop drastically after five. By engaging instantly, Rho turned interest into impact – tripling its meeting volume and boosting meeting quality so reps could focus on closing, not chasing.

The second big learning was really a data insight. By capturing every question prospects ask, companies can spot gaps in their messaging, identify emerging trends, and better prepare reps before that first call.

How will the $15 million seed funding accelerate your roadmap – particularly in product development or customer expansion?

The funding allows us to double down on three areas: expanding our team, adding new agent modalities to complement chat, voice and email, and refining our platform to be able to handle highly complex GTM workflows not previously possible.

We’re hiring across engineering and GTM roles to meet growing demand, while also strengthening integrations with CRMs and workflow tools so Spara fits seamlessly into how teams already operate. On the product side, we’re investing in next-generation voice capabilities – agents that can join live sales calls, capture context, and provide real-time insights for reps.

Ultimately, the funding helps us move faster on our mission to make every buyer interaction instant, helpful, and on-brand.

You’ve described Spara as bridging the gap between human connection and AI efficiency. What does that balance look like as the technology matures?

We believe the future of sales is deeply human, and AI can make it more human by removing friction. When AI handles the repetitive, time-sensitive parts of the process, reps can focus on the high-value conversations where relationships and trust are built.

Spara handles the first conversation, qualifies interest, and shares insights so that when a human rep steps in, they’re set up and ready to close. That’s what we mean by combining AI efficiency with human connection.

As AI becomes the first point of contact in the buyer journey, how do you see the role of human sales teams evolving?

Sales teams will become more strategic and consultative. The first five minutes of every interaction – the scheduling, qualification, repetitive Q&A – can be handled by AI. But the empathy, creativity, and problem-solving that drive complex deals are still deeply human skills.

We think this will actually make sales a more rewarding career. Reps will spend less time triaging leads and more time doing what they do best – understanding customer needs, closing deals, and driving more revenue per rep.

Looking five years ahead, what do you envision as the defining characteristics of a successful AI-powered sales organization?

The defining characteristic will be responsiveness. In five years, every successful sales organization will have an AI-powered conversion layer that ensures no opportunity is missed and every buyer gets an instant, personalized response.
These organizations will also be much more data-driven. They’ll understand what their buyers care about – not just who they are – because they’ll have captured that information from the very first interaction.
And finally, they’ll be more efficient. By letting AI handle volume and velocity, companies can focus their people on strategy, creativity, and customer relationships: the parts of sales that will always require a human touch.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Spara.