The Sprinklr Story
A little over a year ago I said “bye-bye” to both Microsoft and Seattle (previously) and started a new adventure at Sprinklr. If I were to summarize the last 16 months it would be: INTENSE.
It’s exactly the kind of adventure I was looking for — with some amazing highs and some amazing lows. While I miss the mountains in Seattle, I’ve got lots of mountains in my life (subtle musical theatre reference for those of you who are paying attention).
One thing that’s been super fun at Sprinklr has been defining and landing some foundational work around Vision, Mission, and Culture (what we call “The Sprinklr Way”). It’s really interesting to be in a company at this stage of development (+$300M in revenue and growing like a weed) and set the foundation stones that will be guiding our teams in the 2020s when we’ll be a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It’s pretty humbling when you think about it — thousands and maybe even millions of people’s lives will be changed by Sprinklr, and we are setting that ball in motion today. I just hope that Future Grad will be pleased with what Past Grad has done, because he’ll be living with my current output.
As a starting point, we did some really interesting work around “The Sprinklr Story” — something that Sprinklr never got around to writing down because they were so busy doubling the business every year. However, it’s important to document a company’s myths, because those stories form the basis of culture. And if you don’t write it down, you can forget what you stand for, which happened at Sprinklr. This led to something referred to internally as “The Dark Year.” That 2017 meltdown is now two years in the rear-view mirror, but it was a galvanizing experience for the company which found that when it lost its culture, it almost lost its business. It’s been fun to be part of the turnaround.
Ragy recently did an on-stage interview with John Chambers at the Collision Conference in Toronto, ON and he talks very openly and frankly about what he’s learned as a CEO, and what he learned from “The Dark Year:”
So, without further preamble, here’s the latest draft of The Sprinklr Story which will soon appear on our new, re-launched Web site:
The Sprinklr Story
Sprinklr (@Sprinklr) began in CEO and Founder Ragy Thomas‘ spare bedroom in his house in New Jersey, USA on September 24th, 2009, and officially launched with its first customer on January 15th, 2010. New customers quickly signed up for the revolutionary new service, including Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, and Nike. They all loved the Sprinklr vision of a Unified Front Office (UFO), and were reassured by Sprinklr’s enterprise-class security, governance, and privacy.
Now, 10 years later, all those early adopters are still customers and Ragy remains CEO. Over the years a seasoned management team has joined Ragy, including experienced executives from companies such as Cisco, Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Salesforce, BMC, BazaarVoice, and The White House.
Sprinklr is proud to be the world’s first Unified Front Office Platform for Modern Channels. Sprinklr’s mission is to enable every organization on the planet to make their customers happier. Sprinklr leads a fast-growing SaaS business with revenues from five products which cover all front office functions (Marketing, Advertising, Research, Care, Engagement) on a single unified cloud with a unified customer ID.
Sprinklr has 22 offices in 15 countries and works with 80% of Forbes’ 50 most valuable brands, half the Fortune 500, and more than a thousand global enterprises, including: Allstate, McDonald’s, Microsoft, NASA, Nike, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Santander, Shell, and Verizon.