{"id":520,"date":"2012-01-24T09:30:54","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T17:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/?p=520"},"modified":"2018-11-11T22:20:41","modified_gmt":"2018-11-12T06:20:41","slug":"2011-startup-year-in-review-thank-you-y-combinator-for-helping-us-reach-50000-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/2011-startup-year-in-review-thank-you-y-combinator-for-helping-us-reach-50000-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossing 50,000 customers and reflections on 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re excited to end the year on 50,000 sites, a team of 4 and a big surprise coming in early 2012! We\u2019ve had great external help this year and want to thank\u00a0Y-Combinator<\/a>, our advisors and our investors. Thank you!<\/p>\n

This year has been one of forward progress for Envolve. Looking back at the past 12 months we feel a sense of accomplishment at the milestones we\u2019ve achieved and we are extremely grateful for the relationships we\u2019ve built with our customers, our investors and our peers in the startup community.<\/p>\n

Some of you may remember that 2010 wasn\u2019t the best year<\/a>,\u00a0but that all changed in 2011.<\/p>\n

The year began with a burst of growth that was connected to the release of our single sign on (SSO) feature in mid-December 2010. This feature allowed site owners to pass Envolve the names of their users. When a user logged in to their site, our chat system would automatically know the user\u2019s name, display their picture and show a link to their profile.<\/p>\n

Our growth continued into the spring with the addition of high profile Facebook games,\u00a0VIP Society<\/a> and Area Extreme<\/a>, and high profile musicians, Blink 182 <\/a>and Mindless Behavior<\/a>.\u00a0These additions helped fuel new sign ups: we added almost 2,000 sites in the month of January and we added almost 5,000 sites in December, bringing our grand total to 49,600 websites.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a><\/p>\n

As we moved into summer, our pace of work increased dramatically as Y-Combinator\u2019s Tuesday dinners got underway. Y-Combinator is an intense 3-month accelerator program that is widely regarded as the best early stage startup program. Two notable things happened during our time there, Vikrum<\/a> joined us in July and we launched our API <\/a>in August. Our API\u00a0allowed site owners to customize Envolve more than ever before, it included the ability to group users, embed chats and much more. Overall our API pushed us closer to becoming the world\u2019s most customizable chat system.<\/p>\n

YC concluded with demo day on August 23rd and 24th. Here\u2019s our presentation:
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