Speakeasy Secures $5M in Series A Funding to Reinvent the Conference Call Experience

Speakeasy, provider of mobile-first conference calling software, launched its iPhone app and web client to transform today’s arcane conference call technology into an engaging, shared mobile experience to enable businesses to communicate more productively with customers and colleagues. Speakeasy also announced its Series A funding of $5 million from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) and Salesforce Ventures.

Built on the best-in-class Twilio cloud communications platform, Speakeasy gives call organizers and attendees a shared mobile-first experience, featuring:

• PIN-less Conference Calls: By eliminating the need for PINs and access codes, Speakeasy removes the frustration from starting conference calls
• Smart Start: Ensures timely meetings by calling all participants at the scheduled start time or when the first attendee joins, giving everyone minutes back in their day
• Call Courtesy: Easily notify attendees of your availability, update start time or change meeting attendance with a tap on the smartphone
• Private Lobby: Gives organizers the ability to run meetings, manage participants, and collaborate with confidence by controlling call access
• Meeting Summaries: Immediately generate meeting summaries to capture attendance, participation and call duration stats for every meeting you have

The Speakeasy executive team, which includes former Salesforce executives, recognized an opportunity to improve the customer experience in the $7 billion conference call market (according to Wainhouse Research).

“Even as Twitter, Slack, Box and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions have created new mediums for communication and collaboration, the conference call experience remains largely unchanged, despite every employee and customer carrying a smartphone,” said Reza Mohsin, co-founder and CEO of Speakeasy. “People want to collaborate better, but technology is getting in the way.”

A recent Speakeasy survey of business conference call users found:

• 55% of respondents felt frustration or stress going into a conference call
• 75% said they would be more productive if they never had to send access codes or wait for people to dial in
• 81% felt a poor quality conference call experience reflected negatively on them, their company, and its brand

“I’m hooked. Like many busy professionals, I spend hours each day on conference calls,” said Byron Deeter, Speakeasy co-founder and Board Member, and Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners. “The app delivers exactly what you want: call me at the start of the meeting without an annoying PIN code, see who’s on the call without a verbal roll call, and then control the call from my iPhone to add, mute, or drop participants. If you’re a business professional who leads conference calls, you need Speakeasy.”