Airship (company)

Last updated
Airship
Company typePrivate Corporation
Founded2009;15 years ago (2009)
FounderSteven Osborn, Scott Kveton, Adam Lowry, Michael Richardson
Headquarters
Products Advertisements, Analytics
Website www.airship.com

Airship (formerly Urban Airship) is a Portland, Oregon-based company that offers marketing and branding services to its clients. Its services enable businesses to create personalized messages that can be delivered to customers through various channels, such as push notifications and SMS messaging. In addition to messaging services, Airship provides its clients with customer analytics services to help them better understand their customers' behavior and preferences.

Contents

As of November 2020, Airship has offices in Portland, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, New York City, London, Paris, New Delhi, Munich, and Singapore. [1]

History

In 2009, Urban Airship was founded by Steven Osborn, Scott Kveton, Adam Lowry, and Michael Richardson. The company received $1.1 million in Series A funding in February 2010, [2] and then received $5.4 million in Series B funding in November of the same year. [3] On November 5, 2011 Airship received $15.1 million in Series C funding from Salesforce.com, Intel, and Verizon, among others. [4]

On February 6, 2013 the company announced additional funding of $25 million from Foundry Group, Intel Capital, True Ventures and Verizon. [5] In October 2014 the company announced another $12.1 million in Series D funding from existing investors. [6] In February 2015 the company picked up an additional $9 million in venture funding, bringing total funding to $67.6 million. [7] In June 2018 the company completed an F round of funding at $25 million led by Foundry Group. [8]

In July 2014, Scott Kveton stepped down as CEO. In October of that same year Brett Caine was hired as CEO. Caine was previously the president of Citrix Online. [9] In November 2016, Airship launched two messaging APIs Open Channels and Open Profiles. [10] In September 2018, Airship released beta SDK for iOS. [11]

In June 2019, the company rebranded as Airship (formally being Urban Airship) [12]

Acquisitions

Airship acquired SimpleGeo on October 31, 2011 for a reported $3.5 million. [13] SimpleGeo developed toolsets allowing developers to more easily create location aware mobile applications and had partnered with Airship to combine software and services shortly before their acquisition. Airship discontinued SimpleGeo services on March 31, 2012. [14]

In December 2012, Airship acquired Tello, another True Ventures-backed startup. Airship acquired Tello in an all-stock deal in order to integrate PassTools, Tello's Apple Passbook management product, into its current offering. [15]

The company purchased SMS commerce company, ReplyBuy in September 2020 for an undisclosed amount. [16]

In August 2019, Airship acquired Apptimize, a user experience testing company based in San Francisco, California. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salesforce</span> American software company

Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loopt</span> US technology company

Loopt, Inc. was an American company based in Mountain View, California, which provided a service for smartphone users to share their location selectively with other people. The service supported all the major mobile operating systems. Loopt's services had more than five million registered users and partnerships with every major U.S. mobile phone carrier. Their applications offered a variety of privacy controls. In addition to its core features, users also had the ability to integrate Loopt with other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jay Adelson</span> American Internet entrepreneur

Jay Steven Adelson is an American Internet entrepreneur. In 2014 Adelson co-founded Center Electric with Andy Smith. In 2013 he founded Opsmatic, a technology company that improves productivity on operations teams. In 2015 Opsmatic was bought by New Relic. Adelson's Internet career includes Netcom, DEC's Palo Alto Internet Exchange, co-founder of Equinix, Revision3 and Digg, and CEO of SimpleGeo, Inc. In 2008, Adelson was named a member of Time Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential People in the World and was listed as a finalist on the same list in 2009.

Wrike, Inc. is an American project management application service provider based in San Jose, California. Wrike also has offices in Dallas, Tallinn, Nicosia, Dublin, Tokyo, Melbourne and Prague.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ribbit (telecommunications company)</span>

Ribbit was a telecommunications company based in Mountain View, California. It was acquired by BT Group on July 29, 2008 for $105 million.

Socrata was a business-to-government software company that sold an open data platform whose goal was to help civic developers build apps more efficiently. The company was acquired by Tyler Technologies in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skype Qik</span> Video messaging service from Skype

Skype Qik was a video messaging service by Skype. It was created by the company, Skype Technologies, who acquired Qik. The service, offered for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices, allowed users to exchange video messages between individuals or within a group.

Twilio Inc. is an American cloud communications company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SendGrid</span> Email delivery service

SendGrid is a Denver, Colorado-based customer communication platform for transactional and marketing email. The company was founded by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, and incubated through the Techstars accelerator program. As of 2017, SendGrid has raised over $81 million and has offices in Denver, Colorado; Boulder, Colorado; Irvine, California; Redwood City, California; and London.

Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting artificial intelligence, autonomous technology, data center and cloud, 5G, next-generation compute, semiconductor manufacturing and other technologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Upptalk</span> Proprietary voice-over-IP service and software application

Upptalk was a proprietary voice-over-IP service and software application that provided mobile phone numbers in the cloud and allows users to call or text any phone for free whether or not the device receiving the calls and texts has the Yuilop application. The service was discontinued in 2017 and even its domain was abandoned.

Lemon Wallet was a cloud-based digital wallet that allowed users to store digital copies of credit cards, debit cards, reward cards, as well as identification, and other card information. The service was released in July 2011 and the company is based in Palo Alto, California, United States. Wences Casares was the company's CEO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Movile (company)</span> Brazilian firm

Movile is a local Brazilian firm headquartered in Campinas, Brazil. Movile operates in the segments of food ordering and delivery, ticketing, and logistics. It has had mixed success till now with the bet on food delivery maturing (iFood) while other bets still at nascent stage or under performing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vibes (company)</span>

Vibes operates as a privately owned enterprise specializing in mobile marketing solutions, encompassing text message marketing, mobile wallet marketing, push notifications, and mobile web experiences. The company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sinch AB</span> Telecommunications and cloud communications platform as a service (PaaS) company

Sinch AB, formerly CLX Communications, is a communications platform as a service (CPaaS) company which powers messaging, voice, and email communications between businesses and their customers. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, the company employs over 4000 people in more than 60 countries.

Satish Dharmaraj is an American entrepreneur, speaker, angel investor and venture capitalist, who currently serves as a general partner with Redpoint Ventures. In 2021, he was placed #6 on the Forbes Midas List of top 100 Venture Capital investors. Prior to Redpoint Ventures, Satish Dharmaraj founded Zimbra, which he then sold to Yahoo! for $350 million, in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oregon Venture Fund</span> Venture capital fund

Oregon Venture Fund makes venture investments in the Portland, Oregon area and throughout Oregon and SW Washington. The fund consists of 180 institutional and angel investors, of whom 85% have run or founded a business. The fund evaluates up to 300 business plans per year, selecting five to seven to invest in annually. In 2018, the fund changed its name from Oregon Angel Fund to Oregon Venture Fund and launched a new $30M fund. Since its inception, Oregon Venture Fund has generated an average annual rate of return of 34% and a return on investment exceeding $3.50 for each dollar invested.

YourMechanic is an American company that provides mobile automotive repair and maintenance services to vehicle owners at their location, such as their home or office.

Kahuna Inc. was a software startup that made mobile marketing automation software for companies. It provided tools and services for mobile applications to market their apps through mobile messaging channels, including push notifications, in-app messages, and email. The company was headquartered in Redwood City, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qualcomm Ventures</span> Investment arm of Qualcomm

Qualcomm Ventures is the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated. Founded in 2000, Qualcomm Ventures is a corporate venture capital fund with 140+ active portfolio companies. Investing in startups targeting the wireless ecosystem, the group focuses on investments in the sectors of automotive, data center and enterprise, digital health, Internet of Things (IoT), and mobile.

References

  1. "Contact Us". Airship. Retrieved 2020-11-28.
  2. "Urban Airship Announces Series A Round Led by True Ventures". Fierce Wireless.
  3. "Urban Airship Closes $5.4 Million Funding Round To Help Power Mobile Apps". Tech Crunch. 3 November 2010.
  4. Rogoway, Mike (November 15, 2011). "Intel backs Urban Airship, establishes $100 million fund for mobile investment". The Oregonian . Retrieved November 15, 2011.
  5. Fried, Ina (February 6, 2015). "Urban Airship Nabs $25 Million in Additional Funding". All Things D . Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  6. Soper, Taylor (October 22, 2014). "Urban Airship raises $12.1M, looks to help more developers market mobile apps". GeekWire . Retrieved October 22, 2014.
  7. Soper, Taylor (February 20, 2015). "Mobile startup Urban Airship lands $9 million, names new execs". GeekWire . Retrieved February 20, 2015.
  8. "Urban Airship raises another $25M". TechCrunch. 21 June 2018. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  9. Rogoway, Mike (October 9, 2014). "Urban Airship hires CEO: former Citrix Online president Brett Caine". The Oregonian . Retrieved October 9, 2014.
  10. "Urban Airship launches two messaging APIs, support for Apple News notifications". VentureBeat. 2016-11-02. Retrieved 2018-06-06.
  11. "Urban Airship Releases Beta iOS SDK with New App Notification Practices". ProgrammableWeb. 2018-09-15. Retrieved 2018-09-25.
  12. Miles, Stephanie (2019-04-17). "Urban Airship Rebrands as Airship, Offers Broad Suite of Mobile Customer Engagement Solutions | Street Fight". streetfightmag.com. Retrieved 2024-06-07.
  13. "Urban Airship acquired SimpleGeo (confirmed)". Venture Beat. 31 October 2011.
  14. "Urban Airship To Shutter SimpleGeo Services In March, With Factual Picking Up The Slack". TechCrunch . 13 January 2012.
  15. "Urban Airship Acquires Tello For Apple Passbook Tools". Forbes.
  16. "Airship acquires SMS commerce company ReplyBuy". TechCrunch. 24 September 2020. Retrieved 2020-09-25.
  17. Levy, Nat (August 27, 2019). "Mobile marketing startup Airship acquires Apptimize to bolster customer experience testing". GeekWire. Retrieved June 7, 2024.