Ten years ago, on a Friday night, in a small studio at the edge of Paris, I wrote the first lines of code that started the Gorgias adventure.
Why was I coding a customer service solution?
I volunteered to help with customer service at Gymglish to understand our customers and support process better. I still believe that doing customer service makes you at least a better engineer. Everyone should do it. Antoine and Ben (our first investors) encouraged me to improve things, and I had tried a few helpdesks, but they were expensive and complicated for Gymglish.
Enter Gorgias. The idea was simple: Write faster on the internet with templates.
Ionut helped me with initial iterations. Soon after, I met with our now-CEO, Romain, and the small project became a bigger idea, then a startup with customers, and eventually, a fast-growing company.
Picking up steam
In late 2015, we got accepted to accelerators in Numa, in Paris, then joined Techstars NYC, where Alex Iskold was our sponsor and investor.
Soon after, we raised our seed round from CRV, with Murat Bicer leading the round. Next, we moved to San Francisco, where we managed to find product-market fit over the next 18 months with Louis, Martin, and Jean-Elie.
Once we got to around $10,000 MRR, Aasif joined, and Jason Lemkin from SaaStr provided additional funding when we most needed it. Jason has guided us since then, investing in all the following rounds!
10 years later
Today, we are proud to serve around 12,000 ecommerce merchants, improving the customer experience for hundreds of millions of shoppers. I’m extremely fortunate to work side-by-side with 250+ talented and hard-working Gorgians to accomplish these amazing things.
Looking back, it’s clear that this was a series of winning lottery tickets that cannot be replicated. Gorgias exists because many people (including many I didn’t mention) gave Romain and me a chance.
This is how startups are made. Day by day, year by year, with lots of luck, leaps of faith, and hard work from many people.
I’m writing this for those who took the first step and entered the entrepreneurial arena. I tip my hat to you, my brothers and sisters! Expect the road to be long and arduous, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.
All big things have small beginnings…
…and we’re just getting started.
