SendGrid (also known as Twilio SendGrid) is a

Denver, Colorado Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

-based customer communication platform for transactional and marketing

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

. The company was founded by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, and incubated through the Techstars accelerator program. As of 2017, SendGrid has raised over $81 million and has offices in

;

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

;

Irvine, California Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...

;

Redwood City, California Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a ...

; and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. The company went public with a debut in the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...

on November 16, 2017.

Twilio Twilio () is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using it ...

acquired SendGrid in February 2019.

General

SendGrid provides a

cloud-based Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multip ...

service that assists businesses with email delivery. The service manages various types of email including shipping notifications, friend requests, sign-up confirmations, and email

newsletters A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of in ...

. It also handles

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

(ISP) monitoring,

domain keys DomainKeys (informally ''DK'') is a deprecated e-mail authentication system designed by Yahoo to verify the domain name of an e-mail sender and the message integrity. Aspects of DomainKeys, along with parts of Identified Internet Mail, were combine ...

sender policy framework Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method designed to detect forging sender addresses during the delivery of the email. SPF alone, though, is limited to detecting a forged sender claim in the envelope of the email, which is ...

(SPF), and

feedback Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...

loops. Additionally, the company provides link tracking,

open rate There are two types of "open rates"- one for electronic mail (aka e-mail; see below) and one for physical mail (aka snail mail via the USPS or other physical mail carrier). Email Open Rate The email open rate is a measure primarily used by mark ...

reporting. It also allows companies to track email opens, unsubscribes, bounces, and spam reports. Beginning in 2012, the company integrated

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

, voice, and

push notification Push technology or server push is a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull/get, where the request for the transmission of informat ...

abilities to its service through a partnership with

. SendGrid offers a

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...

version and a Lite Plan (pay-as-you-go), as well as three expanded levels of service: Essentials, Pro, and Premier. SendGrid's clients include

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery (Uber Eats and Postmates), package ...

Foursquare Four square is a ball game. Four square may also refer to: Internet and entertainment * Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app * ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show * ''4 Square'' (TV series), a Canadian children's s ...

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora (Greek: , derived from , ''pān'', i.e. "all" and , ''dōron'', i.e. "gift", thus "the all-endowed", "all-gifted" or "all-giving") was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hes ...

, and

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...

Controversy

The controversial firing of Adria Richards in March 2013 and the surrounding circumstances became known as Donglegate.

Funding

Before SendGrid was called Twilio SendGrid, they named the project ''smtpapi.com''. After founding SendGrid in

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire an ...

, in July 2009, Saldana, Lopez, and Jenkins enrolled the startup in the TechStars accelerator program and moved the company to Boulder, Colorado. By December 2009, the company announced it had raised $750,000 in a funding round led by Highway 12 Ventures. Other participating investors included

SoftTech VC Uncork Capital (formerly known as SoftTech VC) is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California, founded by Jeff Clavier. Considered one of the most active established seed funds in Silicon Valley, it has invested in companies such as ...

, FF Angel, and TechStars founder David Cohen. In April 2010, the email

software-as-a-service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

(SaaS) company received $5 million in

Series A round A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

funding from Foundry Group, SoftTech VC, and Highway 12 Ventures, as well as individual investors including David Cohen, Scott Petry,

Dave McClure David "Dave" McClure is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who founded the business accelerator 500 Startups (now 500 Global), serving as CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Venture Capita ...

, and

Matt Mullenweg Matthew Charles Mullenweg (born January 11, 1984) is an American entrepreneur and web developer living in Houston. He is known for developing the free and open source software, free and open-source web software WordPress, now managed by The WordP ...

. Ryan McIntyre, the co-founder of Foundry, joined SendGrid's board of directors at this time as well. In January 2012, SendGrid raised $21 million in Series B funding. The funding round – led by

Bessemer Venture Partners Bessemer Venture Partners (Bessemer) is an American venture capital firm. The firm has over $19 billion under management and invests globally, with offices in San Francisco, Redwood City, New York City, Boston, Israel, India, and London. Bessemer ...

and previous investors Highway 12 Ventures, Foundry Group,

500 Startups 500 Global (previously 500 Startups) is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, California ...

, and TechStars – occurred concurrently with a new partnership between SendGrid and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

’s Windows Azure platform. In December 2014, SendGrid raised $20 million in Series C funding. The series C round was led by new investor

Bain Capital Ventures Bain Capital Ventures LLC is the venture capital division within Bain Capital, which has approximately $160 billion of assets under management worldwide. The firm's early-stage investments have included Attentive, Bloomreach, Clari, Docusign, Fl ...

. Current investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Foundry Group also participated. In November 2016, SendGrid raised $33 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Bessemer Ventures and the Foundry Group.

Growth and development

The company announced in May 2011 that it had sent out over 9 billion emails for more than 23,000 companies since its founding. In the same month, SendGrid announced a partnership with web host service

Rackspace Rackspace Technology, Inc. is an American cloud computing company based in Windcrest, Texas, an inner suburb of San Antonio, Texas. The company also has offices in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Austin, Texas, as well as in Australia, Canada, United ...

Hosting that allows Rackspace users to launch email campaigns using SendGrid's software. By January 2012, the service reported that it was sending out 2.6 billion personalized emails per month. By March, the company was experiencing 10% monthly growth. SendGrid announced in June 2012 that it was working with 60,000 businesses and had sent out a total of 45 billion emails since its start in 2009. On July 25, 2012, the company reported it had partnered with

platform-as-a-service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a category of cloud computing services that allows customers to provision, instantiate, run, and manage a modular bundle comprising a computin ...

(PaaS) companies

CloudBees CloudBees is an enterprise software delivery company. Sacha Labourey and Francois Dechery co-founded the company in early 2010, and investors include Matrix Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, HSBC, Verizon Ventures, Golub Capital, Goldman Sa ...

Heroku Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. One of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now supports Java, ...

, and

Engine Yard Engine Yard is a San Francisco, California based, privately held platform as a service company focused on Ruby on Rails, PHP and Node.js deployment and management. History Engine Yard, founded in 2006, offers a cloud application management platf ...

. The company opened its Denver office the following October. In December 2012, SendGrid teamed up with Twilio to incorporate

and push notification services to its platform. The company announced integrations with Parse,

Windows Azure Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft for application management via around the world-distributed data centers. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a ...

, and StackMob the same month. In April 2013, SendGrid announced it had sent over 100 billion emails. That June, the company released its new email marketing service. The service allows marketing professionals and non-technical users to create emails using various newsletter templates and features a drag-and-drop template to fill in content. Former Citrix executive Sameer Dholakia joined SendGrid as the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

in September 2014. In October 2017, SendGrid was ranked #13 in

Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...

's list of The 50 Best Workplaces in Southern California. In December 2017, SendGrid announced that they are processing around 36 billion emails per month. In October 2018,

announced plans to acquire SendGrid for $2 billion. In December 2018, a SendGrid

shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal own ...

filed a lawsuit in

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

federal court in response to the planned acquisition. Twilio completed its acquisition of SendGrid on February 1, 2019. Since the acquisition in 2019, a growing number of customers have complained about support response time, leading to a large amount of negative reviews.

References

External links

* {{Coord, 39.748150, -104.999039, display=title Software companies established in 2009 American companies established in 2009 2009 establishments in Colorado Software companies based in Colorado Companies based in Boulder, Colorado Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Email marketing software Companies based in Denver 2017 initial public offerings Go (programming language) software 2019 mergers and acquisitions Software companies of the United States