On October 11th, 2011, Contactually was incorporated.
We take our Founding Day pretty seriously – we shut down normal operations for the day, make breakfast for the team, retell the origin and history of Contactually, and go and do fun company bonding activities for the rest of the day. In the past, we’ve gone to an indoor trampoline park, played laser tag, and went on a winery tour. This year we did a photo scavenger hunt, chartered a pirate ship, and rented a rooftop of a local bar. It’s a lot of fun, everyone bonds, but the most important part of the day is telling everyone what happened, step by step, the first ~90 days of Contactually. We make sure everyone understands that we’re still a startup, and everything can, should, and will change.
One of the questions that came up during the history presentation was on the original grand vision of Contactually. And the truth is… I didn’t have one.
The idea behind Contactually was most certainly an idea I was passionate about, and had experienced the pain myself – giving me confidence that I had Founder/market fit. But did I imagine, in the early days, for Contactually to be a 52 person (and growing!) venture-backed SaaS startup? No, but I knew this was an idea. Did I write the first line of code knowing that there’s a Total Addressable Market of 7.8M professionals in the US alone? No, but I did enough customer development in the early days to show it wasn’t just my pain. Did I know that we were entering the CRM market at a unique, and incredibly opportune, time? No – I just knew that nothing out there fit what I needed to do, and I wasn’t alone.
I (and soon, we) had conviction that there was something there. And we had to find out.
Happy Birthday, Contactually.
Congrats Zvi, very impressive work!
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