OpenPhone Raises $14M To Redefine the Business Phone for the Remote Work Era

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Nov. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenPhone, the highest-rated modern business phone app, today announced a $14 million Series A funding round, led by David Sacks of Craft Ventures with participation from Slow Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Y Combinator, Garage Capital, and Chapter One Ventures. Concurrent with the new funding, OpenPhone is launching a major upgrade today, including new HubSpot and Zapier integrations, group messaging, analytics, search, and international calls and messaging.

OpenPhone has grown rapidly through bottom-up viral adoption among startups and small businesses. It has tripled its revenue since launching a team product earlier this year, serving thousands of customers worldwide. OpenPhone has the highest rating of any business phone app in Apple's App Store and was named the best business phone by both G2 and Capterra. Replacing antiquated business phones designed primarily for voice communication, OpenPhone automates workflows and enhances business relationships for a new generation of companies, startups, and professionals.

"The traditional business phone has been stuck in the stone age forcing many of us to use our personal phone numbers for business," said Mahyar Raissi, Co-founder and CEO at OpenPhone. "OpenPhone is built to support what people want and need from a business phone and how they communicate and collaborate today: OpenPhone gives anyone the ability to own their business phone number, connect it with their existing devices and work tools, collaborate on messages and calls, and use it anywhere in the world."

The Problem: Today's business phones are a relic of the past

• Today's business phones are largely built on voice, don't use text or group messaging, and can't integrate with modern work software.
• ~77 percent of consumers today use text over any other messaging app for business.
• ~86 percent of small business owners used their personal numbers for professional calls, leaving them vulnerable to privacy and security concerns, as well as obscuring the lines between work and personal life.
• As remote work and distributed teams become more common, demand for easy-to-use and integrated business communication and team collaboration tools continues to grow.

"OpenPhone's viral, bottom-up adoption was an immediate signal to us that the company had figured out the right product to win this $80 billion market," said David Sacks, Co-founder and General Partner at Craft Ventures. "Particularly now, with offices going remote, the business phone needs to be virtual. It makes no sense to have an expensive phone system sitting in an office with no one to pick it up. OpenPhone puts the business phone inside a collaborative app that anyone on the team can use from wherever they are."

Why OpenPhone is Better

• OpenPhone does everything you want out of a modern phone, but is also built with messaging and collaborative tools to meet the needs of businesses, teams, and professionals that other modern phone apps don't offer.
• The platform provides a one-of-a-kind feature that offers a single phone number for the whole team to have access to and use, as well as individual phone numbers for each user.
• OpenPhone is built around fostering relationships, and its lightweight CRM and innovative features provide businesses with the tools to better connect with customers.
• OpenPhone offers integrations with email and modern work software, and works on iPhone, iPad, Android, and desktop.

"The iPhone forever changed what people expect from their phone, yet traditional business phones haven't been able to keep pace," said Sam Lessin, Partner at Slow Ventures. "OpenPhone is primed perfectly to leverage their best-in-class software to provide a modern, convenient business phone that actually works the way people and businesses want it to."

OpenPhone's New Release
Today's new release is in response to customer demand for more integrations, greater administrative workflow capabilities, and seamless messaging, search, and analytics to improve business-to-customer relationships. It features:

• HubSpot and Zapier integrations, in addition to Slack and email, with more integrations on the horizon.
• Group messaging and international calling and messaging.
• Analytics, so you know how many calls your team has made, how much time was spent talking to customers, and more.
• Intuitive search functionality - find any contact, voicemail, message, or transcript instantly.

AirGarage, an all-in-one solution for parking lot owners, has been able to scale its team's capabilities and improve customer experience since adopting OpenPhone's technology.

"We used a Google Voice number that forwarded to my personal cell phone for the first two years of AirGarage's history - a total nightmare," said Jonathon Barkl, Co-founder and CEO at AirGarage. "With OpenPhone, our entire team can respond to customers and have their own dedicated business phone numbers without the headache of signing up for a traditional business phone plan."

OpenPhone Series A investors include: Craft Ventures, Slow Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Y Combinator, Garage Capital, and notable angel investors, such as Jeff Morris Jr. of Chapter One, Todd Goldberg and Rahul Vohra of Todd & Rahul Angel Fund, Brianne Kimmel of Worklife VC, and Elad Gil. This lineup of investors reflects the sizable market opportunity and the confidence in OpenPhone's fast-paced forward trajectory. OpenPhone's latest round of financing will go toward recruiting top talent for its growing engineering and product design teams and developing innovative solutions to help expand its customer base. To learn more, visit: https://www.openphone.co.

To access OpenPhone's media kit for this announcement, please see here.

About OpenPhone
Founded in 2018, OpenPhone is building a new kind of business phone. It provides companies, teams, and people everything they would expect from a modern phone at a cost-competitive price. In just two years, OpenPhone has grown to serve thousands of businesses and professionals around the world. OpenPhone's mission is to enhance the way people communicate at work and bring the business phone out of the stone age. The company is based in San Francisco, California and has raised $16 million to date. To learn more, visit https://www.openphone.co.

Contact: Jess Montejano, [email protected]

SOURCE OpenPhone

Related Links

https://www.openphone.co

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