The Sprinklr Way: People Never Forget How You Make Them Feel
Matt Jacobson | June 23, 2021
Sprinklr has entered its first days as a public company. As proud partners to Sprinklr founder and CEO Ragy Thomas and the team there for the last seven years, we are electrified to celebrate this important milestone on a journey to lead a new category of enterprise software — unified customer experience management.
We met Ragy through our friend and mentor, Neeraj Agarwal at Battery Ventures. Sprinklr was growing at a bristling pace helping some of the world’s largest brands manage their customer communication through new, rapidly growing channels in disruptive areas like social media and messaging. Neeraj thought our deep connections with some of the largest platforms would be a valuable complement as Sprinklr grew.
At Ragy’s invitation back in 2014, my partner Will and I visited him in his humble office on West 35th Street in New York, the same office where Sprinklr is headquartered today. In this small office, with a Buddha statue and beautifully crafted postcards of the Sprinklr emblem, he began to share his dream on the whiteboard.
At this time, Sprinklr was known as the leader in enterprise social media management. But Ragy had a larger vision – to end point solution chaos by creating the world’s first unified customer experience management platform for all customer-facing functions. The goal was to help companies deliver human experiences to every customer on any channel, decimating business silos. It was a powerful and bold view into the future, a single software platform in which brands would communicate with and learn from their customers across all channels.
As our heads nodded aggressively at the world he described, he offered us an opportunity to invest in the company. We went outside to huddle for a minute, came back in with a resounding yes and led the company’s Series D. Nine months later, we led another financing round and have invested again several times since.
Today, Sprinklr is a unified platform for all customer-facing functions. More than 1,000 of the world’s most valuable enterprises, use Sprinklr’s platform.
Like with many great companies, the road was not always easy, but Sprinklr has stayed true to its values and was able to attract a talented management team and board in pursuit of building an enduring company. Over the last many years, we have seen Sprinklr’s values for working, living and being – called “The Sprinklr Way” – show up prominently in the exceptional people at Sprinklr.
Never, ever give up. Ever!
Ragy Thomas is one of the most resilient founders and CEOs with whom we have ever partnered. He saw the changes in the world early and bootstrapped Sprinklr through the hard early years. He navigates the ship as the landscape and platforms shift and always wakes up to fight another day. Sprinklr’s achievements and opportunity are a byproduct of Ragy’s never ending energy and willpower to build something important and make the world a better place.
It’s OK. Be Fearless.
Pavitar Singh is Sprinklr’s longtime, brilliant CTO and has fearlessly led the product and engineering organization through rapid expansion. What began with engagement expanded into a suite of products encompassing care, research, marketing and advertising. As Sprinklr scaled their team, channels, products, data volume and some of the largest customers in the world, Pavitar has always run head on into the challenges. He started investing heavily in sophisticated AI and data modeling many years ago, and today their custom data models drive 10B predictions every single day. He is an artist not constrained by the limits of the canvas but of the imagination.
Sprinkle, don’t shout. Keep moving forward.
Chris Lynch has been the CFO for the last eight years. Prior to Sprinklr, he was at Bazaarvoice on the frontier of CXM. Chris has been a ballast — a sturdy, stabilizing force through the high growth. Through his steady hand, Sprinklr has continued to move forward in a thoughtful, disciplined way.
Fix it, don’t complain.
Over the last several years, Sprinklr was able to attract incredible leaders to enhance and up-level core functional areas. As their sales model expanded to a platform across a global theater, Luca Lazzaron joined as CRO. He is a world-class sales leader, building an amazing team to focus and deliver for Sprinklr’s customers with sangfroid. Vivek Kundra joined Sprinklr as COO, leveraging his work in government and Salesforce to bring analytical operating rigor to the heartbeat of Sprinklr. Diane K. Adams joined to lead talent and culture following a successful career at enduring companies, including Cisco, and has navigated many shifts in the organization including this last year through the pandemic. Grad Conn joined after 11 years at Microsoft, and as Sprinklr’s Chief Experience Officer, Grad creates an engaging and memorable community for the world’s largest brands. Dan Haley joined as General Counsel with endless energy and deep public experience. These leaders have all made an indelible mark on Sprinklr. Even at the most challenging times, they harness their energy towards improvement and growth.
Passionately, genuinely care.
Ragy has built out a world-class board of directors who have brought passion and energy to supporting the company. John Chambers is a giant in the world of technology, and the care and dedication he has shown to advising Ragy and the team at Sprinklr has been nothing short of exceptional. Carlos Dominguez is Vice Chairman and has poured his heart and soul into supporting Sprinklr as a board member and executive. Ed Gillis has served on the board for many years as Audit Chair and, with his depth of experience, has been a sober and direct voice of strength along the journey. Yvette Kanouff is a brilliant technologist and engineering leader and dives in deeply with compassion and tough love. In terms of investors, Neeraj Agarwal and Tarim Wasim are selfless, peak performers in every way and have been amazing co-investors.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come
We are unbelievably proud of the Sprinklr team in all that they have achieved in the seven years of our partnership. We are very excited for the journey ahead to empower some of the world’s largest and loved brands to make their customers happier. As Ragy has said from our first meeting until this morning, “The best is yet to come.”