Celebrating 5 Years of Apptentive

This month marks Apptentive’s fifth birthday. As many as 90% of companies don’t make it to their fifth birthday, so this is a special year for us that we aren’t taking for granted. We’re so proud that we have the privilege of continuing to serve our customers everyday. There are several factors that have contributed to our success over the years, but two in particular stand out above the rest: our team and our customers.

Thank you to our team

Without our talented, passionate team, we wouldn’t be here today. At Apptentive, we think of each other as family, not just co-workers. We celebrate all wins (big and small), make tough decisions together, help each other when we’re in need, and make an effort to take a break from working to have “team days” where we just have fun.

Celebrating our fifth birthday at Fremont Brewing in Seattle!We know startup life isn’t easy, but working with such great, driven people makes it all worth it. From the bottom of my heart—thank you for all of your hard work in creating our product, your dedication to our customers, and most of all, to each other.

Thank you to our customers

We have the pleasure of serving some of the best companies in the world. We strive to earn our customers’ love each day, but if our customers didn’t love their customers, we wouldn’t be in business. Because you care so much about your customers, and their experience, we’re able to do what we do best—create a better mobile experience.

You care what your customers have to say, and are all ears when it comes to receiving feedback. In an age when everything is getting louder, you have taken action to make sure you’re able to hear your customers’ voices in the sea of noise. On top of listening, you actually take action based on the feedback you receive. This proactive approach is a powerful force in the success of mobile apps. Thank you for caring so much about your customers, and for allowing us to power your mobile experiences.

A few lessons we’ve learned along the way

Starting a company is a rollercoaster that teaches you many lessons. Together the four founders have learned several. Here are a few lessons my co-founders have learned starting Apptentive:

“Build a great culture.The stronger your culture the more resilient you will be to the challenges of a startup. One of the single most important things for any startup is to be purposeful in building your culture. Ultimately there are a huge number of factors that will determine a company’s success, but of those that you as a founder control, establishing and maintaining the right culture may very well be the most important.” – Mike Saffitz, CTO and Co-founder

Team Apptentive celebrates Thanksgiving together, 2015“Engineers need time to be creative and experiment. They spend most of their time working on the product roadmap, but they need opportunities to explore whatever is interesting to them, such as building new tools or learning a new language. We do hackathons every few months to give our engineering team the chance to build whatever they want. It’s important to understand that the value doesn’t come solely from incorporating their hackathon projects into the roadmap, but in showing the team how big the possibilities are. When you focus too much on the roadmap (which must be done to build a product), you’re ignoring new developments that can move your company forward—and allowing engineers to be creative and experiment is crucial in that process.” – Sky Kelsey, Director of Client SDK’s and Co-founder

Barry Li, Android Software Engineer, presents his hack day project to the team.“If you’re going to start a startup, start it with friends. Before starting Apptentive I’d heard over and over again not to start a company with friends. Starting Apptentive with three of my friends has taught me just the opposite. You need to be able to trust each other implicitly to do the right thing, make the right decisions, pull your own weight, ask for help when it’s needed, and recognize when something really does require more than one person. A startup becomes a big part of your life—share that time and experience with people you like.” – Andrew Wooster, Co-founder

The founders of Apptentive. From left to right, Robi Ganguly, Andrew Wooster, Mike Saffitz, and Sky Kelsey.One thing I’ve learned is that love is infectious—people want it, and customers crave it. We care about love in all of its forms at Apptentive. Love flows through your team internally and touches your customers externally.

Team Apptentive celebrating a big launch in January, 2016.Trust is a necessary foundation for love, and is built on positivity, thank you’s, true apologizes, and honesty. Focus on earning the trust of your team and your customers, and you’ll earn their love too.

Team Apptentive, late 2015

The next five years

While no one can predict the future, it is assumed that 80-90% of the global population will be using smartphones within 10 years. As the world continues to become more mobile obsessed, we’ll be here helping companies talk to their customers. We’re looking forward to what the next five years will bring, and spreading #CustomerLove along the way.