Knock is a New York-based notification and customer-engagement infrastructure company that gives developers a single API and dashboard to design, manage, and deliver messages across in-app, email, SMS, push, and chat channels. Founded in 2021 by former Frame.io leaders Sam Seely and Chris Bell, Knock lets product and engineering teams ship cross-channel notification workflows without building and maintaining an in-house system, and now powers messaging for companies like Vercel, Webflow, Amplitude, and Clay.
Telerivet is a cloud communications platform that lets organizations send, automate, and orchestrate messages across SMS, WhatsApp, Voice, USSD, Viber and more - in any market, including the places bigger providers ignore. Born from a Peace Corps insight in Tanzania that most people have a phone but not the internet, it now powers enterprises, governments, NGOs and universities across 150+ countries with a drag-and-drop rules engine, APIs, and a phone-as-gateway model that reaches customers where the network is thin.
Vendorflow is a Los Angeles-based unified communications platform for trucking fleets, freight brokers, ports, and terminals. It consolidates voice, SMS, WhatsApp, and ELD in-cab messaging into a single shared inbox that integrates with TMS and ELD systems, so dispatch and operations teams can collaborate on driver conversations in one place - no app installs required for drivers.

Joshua Stern is the CEO and co-founder of Telerivet, a mobile communications platform built for organizations that operate where bandwidth is thin, languages are many, and feature phones still matter. A Stanford computer science graduate who joined the Peace Corps instead of the Valley, he learned the texture of mobile networks on the island of Pemba, off Tanzania, then turned that field experience into software used by NGOs, governments, and enterprises across more than 50 countries.
Avochato is a Mill Valley, California SaaS company that gives sales, support, marketing, and operations teams a shared inbox for two-way business conversations over SMS, MMS, RCS, voice, live chat, and WhatsApp. Built for enterprise security and HIPAA compliance, it plugs into Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Okta, and Zapier, and layers in AI agents (Avo AI) for auto-replies, routing, and sentiment detection. Founded in 2016 and backed by a $5M Series A, Avochato has helped 1,000+ businesses run millions of customer conversations.
Courier is a San Francisco notification infrastructure platform that lets developers add multi-channel messaging - email, SMS, push, in-app, Slack and more - to their apps through a single API and a drag-and-drop designer. Often described as 'Stripe for notifications,' it routes messages intelligently across channels so engineering teams stop rebuilding notification systems from scratch. Founded in 2019 (YC S19), Courier raised a $35M Series B led by GV in 2022 and powers notifications for companies like New Relic, LaunchDarkly, Lattice, Vanta and Contentful.

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.
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.
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.

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.