Martin Payne is the CEO of TextUs, the Denver-based business texting platform built for recruiting, inside sales, and customer service teams. A career operator of growth-stage technology companies, he came up through the U.S. Air Force, Global Healthcare Exchange, GutCheck, and Mersive Technologies before taking the TextUs helm in 2020. He runs the company on a 'do the right thing' philosophy and is betting that text - conversational, human, and immediate - is the future of how businesses talk to people.
Twilio is a cloud communications platform that turns telephone networks, SMS, email, and messaging apps into a few lines of code. Through programmable APIs for voice, messaging, email, and identity verification, plus a customer data platform built on its Segment acquisition, Twilio lets developers and enterprises embed communication and customer engagement directly into their software. More than 400,000 active customer accounts, including roughly 90% of the Fortune 500, build on it.
Nutshell is an all-in-one CRM and growth platform built for B2B small and mid-sized businesses that are tired of overpaying for software they barely use. Founded in 2009 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Nutshell combines sales pipeline management, email marketing, and customer engagement tools into a single subscription — with free live support on every plan. Acquired by digital marketing agency WebFX in 2022, Nutshell now serves over 5,000 companies across 50 countries, competing against industry giants like Salesforce and HubSpot by doing less, but doing it better.
Close is a bootstrapped, profitable sales CRM built for small and mid-sized teams that want to spend less time on admin and more time actually selling. Founded in 2013 out of a San Francisco sales agency, it combines pipeline management, built-in calling, email, and SMS into one platform - no integrations required. With $17M+ ARR and a fully remote team across 40+ countries, Close has grown almost entirely without venture capital, making it one of the more unusual success stories in SaaS.
Pieter de Villiers is the Co-Founder and CEO of Clickatell, the company that invented the world's first SMS API in 2000 with four lines of code and went on to pioneer chat banking and chat commerce globally. Based in Stellenbosch, South Africa, he led Clickatell to become the first African startup backed by Sequoia Capital, raised over $118 million in total funding, and built a platform that processes roughly 9 billion messages monthly for more than 10,000 enterprise clients across 220+ countries. He also chairs SiMODiSA, a non-profit focused on digital skills development and startup acceleration in Africa.
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) is an all-in-one CRM and marketing/sales automation platform built exclusively for small businesses. Founded in 2001 in Arizona by Clate Mask and the Martineau brothers, Keap helps entrepreneurs automate follow-up, manage contacts, process payments, and grow revenue through a unified platform. With over 31,500 customers, $85M+ in annual revenue, and a history of processing billions in payments, Keap is a leading SMB-focused CRM that was acquired by Thryv Holdings in October 2024 for $80M.