Twilio SendGrid, commonly known as SendGrid, is an American communication platform for transactional and marketing

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

based in

Denver, Colorado Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

History

SendGrid was founded in 2009 by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins. Later, it was incubated through the Techstars accelerator program. 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, FF Angel, and TechStars founder David Cohen. In April 2010, the email software-as-a-service (SaaS) company received $5 million in

Series A round A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in excha ...

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) and served as its CEO until his resignation in 2017. He founded Practical Ventur ...

, and Matt Mullenweg. 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, led by Bessemer Venture Partners. In August 2012, SendGrid opened an office in

Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

. In December 2012, SendGrid partnered with Twilio to incorporate SMS and push notification services to its platform. In March 2013, the controversial firing of Adria Richards and the surrounding circumstances became known as Donglegate. In June 2013, SendGrid released its new email marketing service. In September 2014, former Citrix executive Sameer Dholakia joined SendGrid as the CEO. In December 2014, SendGrid raised $20 million in Series C funding. The series C round was led by a new investor Bain Capital Ventures. 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. SendGrid 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, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

on November 16, 2017. Twilio acquired SendGrid in February 2019. In October 2018, Twilio announced plans to acquire SendGrid for $2 billion. Twilio completed its acquisition of SendGrid on February 1, 2019.

Platform

SendGrid provides a

cloud-based Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

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 Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and Printmaking, images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylind ...

. It also handles

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

(ISP) monitoring, domain keys, the

sender policy framework Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method that ensures the sending mail server is authorized to originate mail from the email sender's domain. This authentication only applies to the email sender listed in the "envelope from ...

(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 handle ...

loops. Additionally, the company provides link tracking and open rate reporting. It also allows companies to track email opens, unsubscribes, bounces, and spam reports. 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 ( ...

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

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 Bain Capital companies