SuperPhone builds a personal relationship-management product that turns texting into a CRM-like experience, centered on a patent-pending Never Lose Touch reengagement feature and upcoming conversation-health analytics. The app lets users sort contacts by location, title or spend, monitor address-book growth, and integrates with Shopify to drive purchases. It is available on iOS with Android coming soon and charges about $0.10 per active conversation per month (roughly $1.20 per contact per year). The company is led by cofounder and CEO Ryan Leslie, who originally developed the product to monetize fan relationships. Enterprise usage includes Atlantic Records managing roughly half a million fan conversations; the company employs 22 people. Roadmap items include analytics showing who messages whom more, an API to connect with traditional CRM and business-texting tools, and conversation-health metrics built with a top phone manufacturer. SuperPhone competes with tools such as Hustle, Zipwhip, Teckst and Zingle, and faces authenticity risks around automated reengagement messaging. Superphone is an SMS-based customer relationship and direct-sales tool that gives creators a dedicated phone number to collect fan data, send targeted messages via Twilio, and drive purchases through links to Shopify and other stores. The product charges clients based on how many text messages they send plus a 5% fee on e-commerce payments. It is in private beta with roughly 2,700 clients across verticals, including musicians (Lil Wayne, Kevin Jonas) and authors, and founder Ryan Leslie has 40,000 fans in his Superphonebook. Leslie has used Superphone to sell 200 tickets at $1,700 apiece in 48 hours and runs a lifetime-album model where fans pledge per-release payments. The team currently offers a web dashboard and plans to release native apps in the coming weeks, will be hiring out its development team, and intends to add an AI/machine-learning intelligence layer on top of messaging. Financially, the company has closed a $1.5 million seed round led by Ben Horowitz with participation from Betaworks and a broad group of funds and angel investors.

Total raised

$4M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Jan 2018