Shaun Sorensen and the business of getting a reply

The reward for winning Kenect’s pickleball tournament was a bucket of ice. Shaun Sorensen, the company’s co-founder and CEO, had partnered with account executive Jake Lauritzen and beaten the other teams. Then somebody tipped the cooler. Corporate recognition takes many forms. This one arrived at considerably below room temperature.

Sixteen pairs had entered the competition at Veterans Memorial Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Matches took place over two lunch breaks, with colleagues coming out to watch. One of the losing finalists credited the winners’ placement and patience. Sorensen emerged with a title and a rather public reminder that being the boss offers limited protection from your colleagues.

It is a useful entrance to a business story usually told through product launches and acquisitions. Here is the founder inside the company he helped build: competing alongside an employee, with the rest of the office close enough to cheer and administer the celebration.

The number customers already knew

Sorensen co-founded Kenect in 2017. The proposition was easy to describe: let a business send and receive text messages through its existing phone number. Customers would have another way to reach the business, and employees would have a way to manage those exchanges. The telephone number could keep its job and acquire a second one.

The appeal sits in the details of an ordinary day. A customer has a question. A business has somebody answering questions, along with everything else that person must do. Getting both parties on the phone at the same moment adds another requirement to the transaction. Texting gives them room to take turns.

Kenect developed tools for the work around those exchanges: generating leads, requesting online reviews and collecting payments. That combination matters to Sorensen’s story. He was building around conversations with a purpose. The customer who asks a question might become a buyer; the buyer might pay a bill; a completed job might lead to a review.

There is little glamour in making a routine exchange less cumbersome. Its value becomes clearer when the exchange happens again tomorrow, and the next day, across an entire customer base. Kenect gave Sorensen a business built around that repetition, with a familiar behavior at its center.

Making room for the next version

In June 2020, River SaaS Capital announced that it had provided Kenect with non-dilutive capital. The planned uses were straightforward: more employees, more sales and marketing, and expansion into additional markets. Sorensen praised the lender’s professionalism and flexibility. At this stage, the next chapter involved finding more customers and building the organization to serve them.

Another financing decision followed in April 2021, when Kenect announced a strategic growth investment from funds advised by PSG. Product development, customer support, go-to-market expansion and acquisitions were on the agenda. The financial terms remained private. The intended direction was public: a broader operation around the messaging platform.

Expansion also produced a less abstract management problem. Sorensen described a team approaching 150 people and an office that had become too small after just 18 months. The business was occupying 14,000 square feet. A growing organization can look very tidy in a presentation and rather less tidy when everybody needs somewhere to sit.

His list of planned additions included a cornhole corner and a custom Kenect library. The eventual office tour offered more local detail. Conference rooms took their names from Utah ski areas, including Alta and Snowbird. Smaller rooms borrowed the names of national parks. The arcade had Street Fighter and NBA Jam. Utah supplied the geography; the games supplied further opportunities to lose to a colleague.

These are small particulars, but they give the growth some texture. Sorensen’s expanding software company needed space for work, places to gather and room for people to spend a day together. The new building even made the company visible from the freeway. Kenect had acquired a larger footprint in several senses.

The blank canvas has colleagues

Alison Pickett, Kenect’s people leader, remembered a piece of Sorensen’s advice shared during new-hire orientation:

“Decide now what you want to be known for.”

Shaun Sorensen’s advice to new hires

The invitation gives a newcomer something more active than a list of duties. It asks for a reputation to be earned through the work ahead. Pickett connected her experience at Kenect with advancement opportunities, challenging work and colleagues supporting one another. Her account puts a human scale on the organization behind the customer numbers.

Sorensen’s discussion on Fearless Founders adds a more difficult management subject. He emphasized character and attitude in hiring and cautioned against placing too much weight on a candidate’s large-company background. He also addressed what happens when a growing business needs leadership capabilities that its existing structure can no longer supply.

His emphasis was on kindness and transparency during those transitions, including helping departing leaders toward their next role. It is a practical complication of expansion: the organization changes, while the people who helped create it still deserve consideration. Hiring someone and changing their role belong to the same continuing relationship.

That concern gives the orientation advice an interesting companion. Employees are invited to establish who they can become inside Kenect. Leadership must also recognize when the company’s needs have changed. Keeping those two responsibilities together takes more care than adding another name to an organization chart.

In June 2024, Kenect appointed Scott Lee chief product officer. His background included Microsoft, EMC, Adobe Workfront and Benevity. Sorensen welcomed his experience developing products and leading teams as Kenect expanded in the dealer industry. The appointment placed another experienced executive around a product range that was becoming more involved in customers’ operations. Sorensen’s role now included bringing that experience into an organization with its own habits, relationships and ambitions. The company had moved well beyond the decisions its founders could make around a single product.

Two deals, one direction

In September 2022, Kenect acquired Friendemic, which provided online reputation and digital communication software for automotive and powersports dealerships and manufacturers. Kenect entered the announcement with nearly 6,000 business customers. The combined company was expected to have nearly 8,000 across North America.

For Sorensen, the deal added capabilities and established dealer relationships. He singled out Friendemic’s customer focus and connections with dealerships. Existing Friendemic customers would gain access to Kenect’s texting, payment and communication tools. The acquisition placed more of the customer relationship within the same operation.

The direction became more specific in March 2025, when Kenect announced its acquisition of Auto Labs. This business brought conversational and generative AI technology focused on dealership service operations. Its capabilities included automated scheduling, recall mining, telephony and video inspections. The company was moving further into what happens after a customer has bought a vehicle.

Auto Labs CEO Daniel Gonzales brought another set of people and expertise into the business. The deal’s financial terms were undisclosed. Its operational ambition was clear: bring customer engagement, service scheduling and dealership information closer together. A message could become part of an ongoing service workflow, with the relevant information available around it.

Read together, the acquisitions trace a narrowing focus within a widening product range. Sorensen’s company could do more, while concentrating on the particular needs of dealers. A dealership’s conversations arrive with context: a vehicle, a previous visit, an appointment to arrange. Serving that context requires more than a place to type.

After the keys change hands

By January 2026, Sorensen was discussing that opportunity on Car Dealership Guy. The conversation centered on service departments, AI and the customer relationship beyond the initial sale. He explored both inbound responses and outbound engagement, including the role of personalization. The next appointment had become a central part of his public argument.

It is an extension of the early texting proposition with more work attached. Answering an incoming question is one task. Reaching a customer at a useful moment is another. Connecting either exchange to a service operation asks the software to understand something about the business around the message.

Kenect now describes a customer base of more than 10,000 dealerships across North America. The scale has changed since 2017, as have the products. The recurring concern is recognizable: how does a business keep a conversation moving when its staff have other demands on their attention?

There are external markers along the way. Kenect ranked No. 24 in the 2023 Utah 100. It appointed Scott Lee chief product officer in June 2024 as it expanded in the dealer industry. In 2026, it made its sixth consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5000, at No. 2,917, with 107 percent three-year growth.

Those milestones describe the company around Sorensen. The pickleball court supplies a smaller portrait of his place within it. The person announcing acquisitions also took his turn in a doubles tournament and accepted the wet consequences of victory. Between the two scenes sits the daily work of running an organization.

His next wager concerns the conversations dealers have after the keys change hands. A service visit, a follow-up, a booking: ordinary events that matter to the people trying to arrange them. Sorensen has spent his Kenect years giving those exchanges more room. The next version will be judged, once again, by what happens when a customer reaches out.