Y-Combinator backs Sendwithus
Joining the likes of Reddit, Dropbox, and Songkick, sendwithus is now a member of “The most prestigious program for budding digital entrepreneurs”, Y-Combinator.
Twice a year, Y-Combinator invests a small amount of money ($14-20k + an $80k note) in a large number of startups (most recently 52). The startups move to Silicon Valley for 3 months, during which they work intensively with them to get the company into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors.
During their time in the Accelerate Tectoria program, Matt Harris and Brad Van Vugt found themselves repeatedly having to change a bunch of email templates and wanting to test different variants. What they found was that there was no real technology in place to do so, “Larger companies will usually build their own systems for this”, they explain.
What resulted was a mission to bring optimization and A/B testing to marketers and anyone else sending out targeted promotional emails which led to the birth of sendwithus.
Sendwithus created a website where customers can select from pre-made email templates or upload their own, log in to their preferred email provider, and then set up A/B tests and drip campaigns. Customers also have access to analytics showing how variants and campaigns are performing.
Harris said Sendwithus is focused on “transactional emails” (i.e., the emails that are sent to specific users at specific times, usually to accomplish a specific task) as opposed to newsletters or other broad campaigns. Just managing all the different templates and automatically sending the right one out at the right time is important to the company’s customers, he added.
Founded 11 months ago, Sendwithus already processes more than 1 million emails a day, he added, and its customers include 8tracks, uSell, SuperRewards and App.net. Pricing starts at $19 a month and there’s also a free version for emailing up to 100 customers.
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