Yesware Explained

Yesware
Url:yesware.com
Type:Productivity Plugin
Language:English
Owner:Matthew Bellows
Current Status:Active

Yesware is a sales productivity platform designed as an ease-of-use assistant for businesses. The company was founded by Matthew Bellows, Rajat Bhargava, and Cashman Andrus.[1] [2] The company has over 800,000 users,[3] including companies like Acquia, Groupon, Zendesk and Square.

Company history

Yesware was founded in 2010 by Matthew Bellows, Rajat Bhargava and Cashman Andrus.[4] [5] Bellows was a salesman by trade, and thought that the solutions at the time were tedious and inefficient in sales, and that the process of copying information into customer relationship management (CRM) systems was tedious and often poorly done.[1] Because of these ideas, Yesware was created in an effort to assist salespeople with common sales tasks, and to extract relevant information for reporting purposes.[2] [6]

In September 2011, Yesware released its beta version and raised a seed round of $1 million led by Google Ventures and the Foundry Group.[4] [7] [8]

Two months after launch, in November 2011, the company had 2,000 registered users. One year later, the number of users grew to 100,000.[9] The growth was attributed to word of mouth and searches within the Google Chrome and iPhone App stores.

That same year, Yesware was awarded the top sales productivity award at the Top Sales & Marketing Awards.[10] [11] [12]

In June 2012, Yesware followed up the seed round with a $4 million Series A round, again including investments from Google Ventures, the Foundry Group and others.[13]

After gaining enough funding, in November 2012, Yesware announced a beta integration with Salesforce, which allowed users to create new contacts, develop tasks, and view actionable reports within Yesware and Salesforce simultaneously.[14] [15]

In 2013, the company attempted to move people from the Basic version of the software, which held most of the users, to the Paid version due to failing to turn a profit.[16] This resulted in a change of roles, where Mike Haylon, a previous salesperson, was promoted to Director of Sales, while Bridget Gleason, having sales experience, was given the role of Vice President of Sales.[17]

Description

Yesware is mainly focused on customer relations and acting as an assistant to salespeople, so it comes with features that are useful to businesses and companies, such as email scheduling, a meeting booking tool, email tracking, and customizable templates.[18] One of its main selling points is being able to consistently keep track of customers via email, by plugging into email inboxes, such as Gmail addresses.[19]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: About Yesware.
  2. Web site: Cohan. Peter. Yesware Boosts Sales Productivity, Financial Forecasts. Forbes. November 9, 2011.
  3. Web site: Sign Up Yesware. Yesware. 2016-03-17.
  4. Web site: Kirsner. Scott. Yesware gets $4 million in new funding to help salespeople manage e-mail communications (and soon, phone calls too). The Boston Globe. June 20, 2012.
  5. Web site: Company Yesware. https://web.archive.org/web/20211127173241/https://www.yesware.com/company. 27 November 2021. 2022-02-08. www.yesware.com.
  6. Web site: Licata. Lauren. 8 Affordable (Or Free) Tools That Boost Small Business Efficiency. Business 2 Community.
  7. Web site: Rao. Leena. Google Ventures, Foundry Group Put $1M In Yesware, Email Tracking And Productivity Platform For Salespeople. TechCrunch. September 27, 2011.
  8. Web site: Kirsner. Scott. Yesware launches e-mail tracking product for salespeople, collects $1 million from Google Ventures and Foundry Group. The Boston Globe. September 27, 2011.
  9. Web site: Ribitzky . Romy . November 12, 2012 . Yesware Celebrates 100,000 Users, Looks to the Future . Yesware.
  10. Web site: Liyakasa . Kelly . April 2012 . The New Sales Toolkit . Destination CRM.
  11. Web site: Bellows . Matthew . December 16, 2011 . Yesware Takes Silver For "Top Sales Productivity Tool" . Yesware.
  12. Web site: Kumar . AJ . January 23, 2012 . Five Ways to Tame Your Inbox . Entrepreneur.
  13. Web site: Yesware's Email Platform For Salespeople Raises $4 Million From IDG, Google Ventures, Foundry Group & Others. Perez. Sarah. June 20, 2012. TechCrunch.
  14. Web site: Yesware hits 100K users; won't be acquired by Salesforce or HubSpot. Alspach. Kyle. November 16, 2012. Boston Business Journal.
  15. Web site: Ribitzky. Romy. Yesware Announces Salesforce Open Beta. Yesware. November 15, 2012.
  16. News: Grossmann . John . 2014-08-20 . A Leader Struggles to Sell Software Meant to Aid Sales . en-US . The New York Times . 2022-10-14 . 0362-4331.
  17. Web site: Grossmann . John . 2014-08-27 . The C.E.O. of a Sales Software Company Faces Up to Sales Shortcomings . 2022-10-14 . You’re the Boss Blog . en.
  18. Web site: Siu . Eric . March 23, 2012 . 5 Productivity Tools to Make Your Job Easier . Mashable.
  19. Web site: Gabel . Carrie . April 12, 2012 . Three tech tools to boost your productivity . AG Beat.