Startup Sense Podcast

If you're a developer or a marketer than you've probably heard of SendGrid because they're one of the biggest customer engagement platforms. They were one of the first companies to provide transactional email services enabling them to land customers like Uber, Airbnb, Spotify and Yelp. They have since added other email services which puts them in direct competition with Mailchimp, Aweber and others. SendGrid has been around since 2009 when they were one of the first companies to go through the TechStars accelerator in Boulder, Colorado. The company has raised $80 million from investors, has 380 employees, have made 2 acquisitions and currently operate offices in Denver, Los Angeles, London and the Bay Area. In this interview I spoke with CEO Sameer Dholakia about joining the company 3 years ago to be the new CEO, what was his prior business experience and why did he think SendGrid would be a good fit, what has fueled SendGrid's growth over the past 5+ years, why did they start out by targeting developers, how