You’ve probably never heard of Croatia’s biggest tech giant, but you’ve almost certainly used it.
This summer, Infobip became the latest company in Europe to achieve unicorn status after raising a $200m Series A round.
Infobip has sent texts to ~5B people
The message from Uber, informing you that your ride will arrive in 6 minutes? Infobip. That DM from an airline re: a gate change? Infobip.
The company sends messages on behalf of some of the biggest tech giants in the world, ~750 banks, and ~650 mobile operators.
The bootstrapped company doesn’t need the money
Infobip’s founder (Silvio Kutic) says the main purpose of the fundraising is to bolster the company’s profile in the US, where $40B Twilio reigns supreme.
A big difference between the two: Twilio is taking an “L” on revenue of $1B+, while Infobip is profitable on revenue of $711m.
In fact, before this recent round, the only outside funding the ever-frugal Kutic took was from his parents, while working out of a garage.
How are these companies so huge?
Infobip and Twilio are application programming interface (API) companies, which provide 3rd-party software to the world’s internet economy. Other notable names in the space include Shopify (ecommerce tools) and Stripe (payments).
By providing critical tech tools to all industries, API firms have a massive addressable market and can thrive even as the economy stagnates.
