Korean startup SendBird, the complete chat platform for mobile apps and websites have been ranked No. 38 in the Y Combinator’s recently released Top 100 Companies List for 2019. Y Combinator, a US-based seed funding company for startups, was launched in 2005. Y Combinator has launched over 2,000 companies, many of whom have become big names such as Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, and Dropbox.
The combined valuation of the top YC companies was calculated to be over $155 billion as of October 2019. SendBird is also a member of the Winter 2016 Y Combinator class, and its latest ranking goes on to prove its rapid growth and success! Y Combinator uses valuation to rank the companies through an accessible metric.
Growing by leaps and bounds
Founded by John S. Kim, Brandon Jeon, Harry Kim, Forest Lee, SendBird closed a $102 million Series B round last year. It boasted of over 88 million monthly active users in September 2019, representing a 100% growth YoY. The fully customizable chat and messaging API service help businesses communicate with their customers flawlessly without losing the integrity of their brand. The company, charged by its recent investment, is geared up to meet the ever-growing global demand for in-app user-to-user messaging. Tiger Global Management led the extension with participation from the initial Series B lead, ICONIQ Capital.
SendBird’s growth is also indicative of the broader appeal of platforms encouraging developers to build feature-rich communications into their apps via SDKs and APIs. SendBird has established itself as the world’s leading in-app messaging platform and API. In 2018, the company tripled the number of messages sent through its platform, over 1 billion per month.
@SendBird is on the top Y Combinator companies list. Really excited to be no.38 this year and grateful for our journey! 🙌 #YCombinator https://t.co/Q6Z6zo83CY
— Sendbird (@SendBird) October 3, 2019
Despite about 76% of the world population using messenger apps, the global adoption of user-to-user messaging in business applications faces certain challenges. The market is consolidated among only a handful of messenger apps; the in-app user-to-user messaging is also difficult for engineering teams to build and maintain. SendBird’s expertise in messaging technology ensures that businesses can incorporate this globally adopted messaging channel easily. The company aims to build its market presence as the leader of the industry. They are building the go-to-market engine to scale their global presence and hiring experts in key areas. They have offices in the UK, Singapore, and India and are hiring employees rapidly in its two main locations – the US and Korea.
San Mateo, California-based SendBird’s top global customers, include NBA, Yahoo! Sports, GO-JEK, Carousell, Virgin Mobile UAE, SEGA, Wargaming, Glu Mobile, Healthline, TriNet, Accolade, Yell, Hinge, Kookmin Bank, LG U+, SSG.
SendBird has made remarkable progress as a leader in building the most scalable and powerful chat API in the world. A chat API is an application program interface that provides access to a server infrastructure with the stability and broad features required for real-time chat and messaging at a scale suited to the needs of businesses from an intimate conversation to a massive chat.
SendBird’s competitive edge
SendBird’s core product – a messaging software development kit that enables companies to easily mount chat functionality on their apps, websites, and games. SendBird’s highly scalable product, allows customers to build the features they want. SendBird’s group chat and Super Group chat allows up to 300 and 2,000 users, respectively. The open channels of the software can support tens of thousands of users. SendBird’s infrastructure can support over a million concurrent connections for a single application. SendBird is equipped for user safety with its chat moderation features like user ban, user muting, admin announcement messages, freeze channels, profanity filters, and spam flood protection.
The company supports over 10,000 businesses to connect and converse with their users. The company is serving customers from over 150 countries with a wide range of utility-oriented cases across communities, marketplaces, on-demand services, games, and e-commerce.
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