• Zipwhip

  Participated · Series B · Oct 2016

  Zipwhip provides a platform that enables businesses to send and receive text messages from any business phone number — landline, VoIP, or toll‑free — routing inbound texts to agent dashboards. The service relies on carrier integrations in the U.S. to activate existing business numbers for two‑way SMS and currently routes messages primarily to human agents with limited automated responses. Revenues grew 80% year‑over‑year and the company reports 3.3 million phone numbers across 30,000 businesses, including 100 large enterprises. Pricing is tiered by volume (examples cited: $35/month for one line, $100/month for multiple lines, enterprise pricing to order). Zipwhip has partnerships and customer relationships with major carriers and with Google, and is monitoring Apple’s Business Chat and RCS carrier rollouts as complementary channels. Management sees a large remaining opportunity, estimating roughly 200 million business phone numbers in North America that could be activated for texting. Zipwhip maps businesses' landline and other numbers to a messaging service accessible via a computer dashboard, offering texting, picture messaging, auto replies, scheduled messages, and contact-database integrations. The platform has evolved toward CRM-like functionality and is sold in volume-based tiers (about $35/month, $100/month, or higher for larger deployments). Zipwhip reports around 6,500 business customers and monthly recurring revenues that grew 60% in the last year. The company plans to add more texting features, point-of-sale integrations to enable purchases by text, and deeper CRM integrations. It is positioning itself as an early partner for Apple Business Chat and for RCS on Android. Zipwhip says it will be cautious with chatbots, aiming to "do bots the right way," and continues to evaluate voice features given its work with landline operators. Zipwhip's core product is a cloud-based service that intercepts texts to landline numbers and delivers them to an app-style interface so businesses can read and respond by SMS. The platform targets consumer-facing businesses that rely on phone interactions, with customers including insurance agencies (over 1,000, including Allstate and Farmers), car dealerships, CBS radio stations, staffing firms, gyms, dentists, veterinarians, title companies and credit unions. Zipwhip offers tiered pricing (about $20/month for basic, $100/month for a business tier, and enterprise plans) and is pursuing CRM integrations with Microsoft applications, Salesforce, and others. The company is also exploring ways to secure the texting channel for transactions (an SSL-like approach for business phone numbers) and to support new ad units that route clicks into texts. At the beginning of the year it reported 356% growth in annual recurring revenue, messaging traffic up 300%, was adding roughly $400,000 in ARR per month, and expected to hit $10 million in ARR by Q3 2016. It has been operating since 2007 and is based in Seattle. Zipwhip’s core product is a subscription service that enables businesses to text with customers from landline phones and toll‑free numbers via web, desktop, and smartphone interfaces. The service works across U.S. wireless carriers and is used for customer service, appointment scheduling, and sales. Zipwhip says its most rapid growth has come from businesses in insurance, automotive, staffing, fitness, transportation, radio, and medical industries. The company reported monthly recurring revenue rising from $117,000 in December 2014 to $420,000 in December 2015 and is on pace to reach $10 million in annual recurring revenue by the third quarter of this year. Zipwhip currently has more than 50 employees. Management says it plans to stay focused on product improvement and building the team while raising another round of capital.

No current team members are available.