Thread by @ivolo

May 5, 2011 to Oct 12, 2020 — 9 years, 5 months to build a $3.2B SaaS company

Here’s some of the lowlights/highlights that come to mind:

2010: @asmith speaks at the MIT Founders Journey; after class, we ask him to drop by our dorm for a beer. To our complete surprise, he agrees 🙂 Meeting Adam inspired @calvinfo, @reinpk and I to startup together. Crazy how small actions can have such profound consequences.

2011: @paulg looks at 3 scared MIT kids and says: “I have a good feeling about you guys”. We celebrate by feasting on three complimentary bananas. (high point!)

2012: 2 years and 3 big pivots later, and we’re looking at a dwindling bank account. PG now says: “so you’ve burned half a million dollars and don’t have anything to show for it?”

2012: With a few months of runway left in the bank, @ianstormtaylor has an idea for a final pivot: a simple Analytics API for developers; we launch Segment.io on HN, and developers seem to like it :)

2013: Now, 70+ companies are signing per week, we’re drowning in support tickets (and happy customers); the daily todo list looks like a week plan complete with frantic coding, sales calls, and recruiting emails.

2014: @hawkinsjon takes a huge bet on us by bringing us into XO Group. His conviction gives us the courage to pursue larger companies and build a sales team. Thank you for everything Jon!

2014: First board meeting is in the outdoor courtyard: my first question is “what are board minutes?” @jasonkwon laughs & remarks “this is my first board meeting outside”

2014: We’re having a lot of fun building product. To mark my heritage, I put “Russian Police - Get Lucky” on our 404/500 pages . C’mon its so good:

2016: we launch our first new products Warehouses & Sources: in weeks, hundreds of companies are using both. PMF feels good :)

2018: from humble beginnings, we move into our 7th and latest SF office (!!); from taking sales calls in a closet, we’ve upgraded to 20+ office rooms and 40k square feet; also higher rent!

2019: we launch our startup program: free Segment, free analytics+messaging stack, and YC growth bootcamps; this program has since provided analytics stacks to 10,000+ startups for free :)

2020: across the world, we have 550+ teammates working across SF, Vancouver, Denver, NYC, Dublin, London, and Sydney.

2020: we reach 20,000+ customers including companies Instacart, DigitalOcean, Glossier, Fox, VMWare, IBM who rely on Segment as their CDP. We are so grateful to all of you who believed in us.

2020: @segment is joining @twilio to build the customer engagement platform of the future; With Segment’s “single view of the customer” and Twilio’s communication platform, the combined product will be unstoppable. I can’t wait to see what we build next!