SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Twilio Signal Conference – Speakeasy, provider of mobile-first conference calling software, launched its iPhone app and web client to transform today’s arcane conference call technology into an engaging, shared mobile experience to enable businesses to communicate more productively with customers and colleagues. Speakeasy also announced its Series A funding of $5 million from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) and Salesforce Ventures.
Built on the best-in-class Twilio cloud communications platform, Speakeasy gives call organizers and attendees a shared mobile-first experience, featuring:
- PIN-less Conference Calls: By eliminating the need for PINs and access codes, Speakeasy removes the frustration from starting conference calls
- Smart Start™: Ensures timely meetings by calling all participants at the scheduled start time or when the first attendee joins, giving everyone minutes back in their day
- Call Courtesy™: Easily notify attendees of your availability, update start time or change meeting attendance with a tap on the smartphone
- Private Lobby™: Gives organizers the ability to run meetings, manage participants, and collaborate with confidence by controlling call access
- Meeting Summaries: Immediately generate meeting summaries to capture attendance, participation and call duration stats for every meeting you have
The Speakeasy executive team, which includes former Salesforce executives, recognized an opportunity to improve the customer experience in the $7 billion conference call market (according to Wainhouse Research).
“Even as Twitter, Slack, Box and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions have created new mediums for communication and collaboration, the conference call experience remains largely unchanged, despite every employee and customer carrying a smartphone,” said Reza Mohsin, co-founder and CEO of Speakeasy. “People want to collaborate better, but technology is getting in the way.”
A recent Speakeasy survey of business conference call users found:
- 55% of respondents felt frustration or stress going into a conference call
- 75% said they would be more productive if they never had to send access codes or wait for people to dial in
- 81% felt a poor quality conference call experience reflected negatively on them, their company, and its brand
“I’m hooked. Like many busy professionals, I spend hours each day on conference calls,” said Byron Deeter, Speakeasy co-founder and Board Member, and Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners. “The app delivers exactly what you want: call me at the start of the meeting without an annoying PIN code, see who’s on the call without a verbal roll call, and then control the call from my iPhone to add, mute, or drop participants. If you’re a business professional who leads conference calls, you need Speakeasy.”
At the Twilio Signal Conference, Speakeasy will provide demos at booth M15 and Dave Ewart, Speakeasy CMO will present “Delighting Customers by Solving the Broken Conference Call Experience” at 11:10 AM PT on May 20th, 2015.
“We’re excited to have Speakeasy launch at Signal,” said Rob Brewster, vice president of Global Sales, Twilio. “The Speakeasy mobile application, built on Twilio, is a natural extension of our technology, improving the customer experience and making communication more contextual and productive for businesses.”
About Speakeasy
Speakeasy Tech is a mobile-first company that is reinventing the conference call experience allowing businesses to connect, communicate, collaborate and engage seamlessly with customers and colleagues. Founded in 2014 and located in San Francisco, Speakeasy Tech is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. Learn more and get the mobile app: speakeasy.co and follow us on Twitter @SpeakeasyApp.
About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) invests in early-stage and hyper-growth startups, partnering closely with entrepreneurs to build durable businesses. BVP is a global firm with offices in Menlo Park, Cambridge, New York, Bangalore and Herzliya. With $4 billion under management, BVP invests anywhere from $100,000 to $75 million in innovative companies like Pinterest, Twilio, Box, LinkedIn, Shopify, Mindbody, Yelp, Skype and CornerstoneOnDemand. Over 100 BVP companies have gone public — in the last three years alone, BVP has had 37 exits (IPO and M&A) and made new investments in more than 70 companies. Learn more at www.bvp.com and follow us on Twitter @BessemerVP.
About Salesforce Ventures
Salesforce Ventures—Salesforce’s corporate investment group—invests in the next generation of enterprise technology to help companies connect with their customers in entirely new ways. Portfolio companies receive funding as well as access to the world’s largest cloud ecosystem and the guidance of Salesforce’s innovators and executives. With Salesforce Ventures, portfolio companies can also leverage the expertise of the Salesforce Foundation to incorporate its 1-1-1 model of integrated philanthropy to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce has invested in more than 100 enterprise cloud startups since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.
