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Hi there,
I'm Colin, CEO of Customer.io. In a few short weeks, we're planning to launch a Regulation-CF (Crowdfunding) round to raise money from our community, customers, and supporters.
We're a profitable company that over 2600 early to mid-stage companies rely on to send emails, push notifications, and SMS messages to strengthen their relationships with their audience.
I haven't seen other companies in a similar position do a crowdfunding round, so I wanted to share how we think about it and why we're exploring it.
Regulation changes unlock a new opportunity
In March 2021, the maximum a company can raise through crowdfunding increased from $1.07 million to $5 million. This change makes crowdfunding more interesting for companies that are established and capital-efficient.
A continued focus on capital efficient growth
We believe better companies are built through struggle. Doing more with less is a big part of how we operate. Customer.io has raised less than $4m to generate $20m in Annual Recurring Revenue.
We started using the term "fundstrapping" to describe our approach to building a capital-efficient company.
This approach took a little longer to get going than spending a lot of cash, but we found that it has allowed us to be more durable in the long run. My goal as a founder and CEO is to build a large independent company that endures beyond me. We're just at the beginning.
Winning together with our community
Professional investors have had an unfair advantage that gives them access to companies before the rest of us. By the time a company goes public, and its customers and supporters can invest, the professionals with special access have reaped their rewards while the public tries to catch up.
Customer.io has succeeded because people fought to bring us into their company against the better-funded upstarts and established incumbents. Their feedback and passion have helped our team build a product for technical marketers that has earned us a loyal following.
Our customers, supporters, and community deserve the opportunity to share in the upside of the success they help create.
An opening to do more for our customers
Our customers tell us that the data in Customer.io is the most comprehensive understanding they have of their business.
They also ask us to do more for them. Support more ways to talk to their customers. Automate more of their business processes. Leverage more data from their other tools. For early and mid-stage businesses, there's a demand for Customer.io to play an even larger role in fostering a good relationship between their business and every single customer.
This crowdfunding round will help us accelerate creating the future our customers are asking for.
