10 years in the making. What a week this is!

A $10 billion valuation; the 10 most incredible years of my life.

Talkdesk employees, customers, and partners today woke up to historic headlines, “Talkdesk skyrockets to $10 billion valuation. Sydney Carey appointed CFO.” 

We announced the closing of our Series D funding. As hard as it was to keep the news to myself over the last few weeks, seeing the announcement today was overwhelming even for me. This valuation places Talkdesk among the most highly valued private companies in the software-as-as-service (SaaS) or enterprise software industry. There’s something about seeing it in print that makes it so very real and permanently part of our written history. 

A little more than a year ago, we closed our Series C funding, tripling our valuation from $1 billion to $3 billion. That milestone ignited an energy and drive within the company that is seemingly unstoppable at this point. It set into motion our bold vision to provide a better way for organizations to unlock the promise and potential of great customer service. It laid the foundation for our journey to today. And today, we more than tripled our valuation again in just a little over one year to $10 billion.

Just this week, Talkdesk was positioned again as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Contact Center as a Service report. This recognition as one of only three Leaders, would not have been possible without our entire ecosystem—employees, customers, and partners. 

Also this week, we are again, for the third consecutive year, named to the Forbes Cloud 100, moving up 36 spots this year to #17. It’s a tremendous honor to be included in the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, published by Forbes in partnership with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. It is affirmation of our sacrifices and our successes.

Prioritizing success.

During the past year, we made some pretty big bets, took our fair share of risk, and celebrated breaking innovation barriers. Many of the moments that shaped Talkdesk highlight our differentiation and closely align with our values.

Employee experience: We have the best executive team in the industry, period. They bring experience from some of the technology industry’s leading companies, including AT&T, Cloudera, Oracle, Salesforce, Sumo Logic, and SAP. 

We appointed Sydney Carey as our first Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Sydney is a highly accomplished SaaS industry veteran recognized for her deep public markets, corporate finance, and strategy expertise. With Sydney’s appointment, half of the positions on our executive leadership team are now held by women, which is a rare occurrence in the tech industry, and one we are very proud of.

Customer obsessed: We are known for delivering white glove customer service. This means that our 1,800+ customers around the world get a partner dedicated to their success, and they love us for it. Above all, we listen to our customers, because they help shape our products and our business. Through customer advisory boards and online communities dedicated just to our customers, we are able to engage them in meaningful ways. 

Courageous innovation: We hire the best talent and employ the highest percentage of engineers of any company in the contact center market. More than 50% of our employees are dedicated to research and development (R&D), and 50% of our investment is always in R&D. 

With a goal to automate 80% of customer interactions, we are leading in areas like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) that help enterprises unlock even greater customer experiences. 

Talkdesk is also changing the game for customer experience when it comes to solving the unique challenges of industries such as Financial Services and Healthcare. 

We’re the company that’s bringing all this to market and growing exponentially because of it.

Experience. A better way.

I started this company 10 years ago because I knew that there had to be a better way for brands to interact with customers to create a better experience. 

This moment in our journey reflects the strong confidence investors have in our market opportunity and ability to quickly execute against our strategy. Our new funding will fuel Talkdesk in its second decade of transformational growth as we remain committed to bringing together diverse talent, innovative technology, and an expanding global reach to address a market that shows no signs of slowing.

We have so much to be proud of, and a lot to celebrate! Congratulations to the entire Talkdesk team and community. We’re again making history and positively disrupting the contact center market in ways people never thought possible. We are more committed than ever before to our mission of offering a better way for organizations to unlock the promise and potential of great customer experience.

The journey to “Experience. A better way.” has led to this moment—a $10 billion valuation, brought to life by the most accomplished employee team in the industry, and continued recognition as a courageous innovator.

I invite you to be part of the Talkdesk journey. And, if you think that all of this is exciting…I can’t wait for you to see what’s next!

We should talk.