Yesterday, the cloud-based email delivery service made its New York Stock Exchange debut, raising $131m in its IPO.
The company’s success exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, outpacing projections of both share volume (8.2m) and price ($16) — and their shares debuted at 16% above the IPO price.
A SendGrid refresher
SendGrid was founded in 2009 with the goal of creating a SaaS business to help companies send marketing emails.
Prior to their IPO, they raised $80m in venture capital — a figure nearly matched by their 2016 revenue of $79.9m (though they are still just shy of profitability).
To date, SendGrid has processed upwards of 1 trillion emails, including the one you’re reading right now.
In fact, SendGrid CEO Sameer Dholakia recently cited The Hustle as his favorite newsletter. Aww shucks, Sameer. You’re making us bashful!
This bodes well for email
SendGrid — like its competitors, MailChimp and SparkPost — is banking on the future of email.
As new work-based communications platforms like Slack and HighFive continue to rise in popularity, the staying power of email has become a topic of debate.
But for now, with 54% of the planet (3.7B people) using email, it’s hard to foresee a monumental shift occurring in the near future.
