Text Request - Company of the Year

Company: Text Request, Chattanooga, TN
Company Description: Text Request is a business text messaging software that provides a professional way to manage text messaging as a team, so they can effectively connect with their customers and other contacts. Consumers prefer texting over calls and emails, and businesses need a way to text professionally to build customer relationships, increase revenue, and cut costs. That's exactly what Text Request does.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Company of the Year - Computer Software - Small

Nomination Title: Text Request

Text Request is a text messaging software-as-a-service (SaaS) for businesses and other organizations. Users log in online from any device to send and receive texts through their current business phone numbers.

We started Text Request because we saw a need. At the time, you could call a business, you could email a business, but you could not text a business. Meanwhile, text messaging was (and still is) the most used and most popular form of communication.

So we set out to text-enable businesses, making it easy for them to professionally handle text conversations with their customers and other contacts. We work with businesses of all sizes across a wide range of industries, but focus on small-to-medium businesses.

With Text Request, businesses are able to connect with their customers almost instantly to schedule appointments, provide quotes and service, and much more. Our goal is to provide a professional platform for businesses to connect with their customers through messaging so they can run smoother and grow faster.

From the beginning of 2019 until now, our business has exploded. If you look at a graph of our revenue over the past two years, you’ll see the proverbial “hockey stick” every young business dreams of.

When the COVID-19 pandemic became a challenge for many businesses, we set out to help them solve the problems they were facing by giving them fast, reliable communication solutions. Customers needed to know about changes to operations, which were happening sometimes daily during the earliest days of the pandemic.

At the beginning of 2019, we set out to double our annual recurring revenue by the end of the year, and we actually achieved that goal in early October of 2019. In 2020, we set out to double our annual recurring revenue again,which we did —and then some. Our most recently announced revenue milestone was achieved in November of this year at $5 million, and all of these goals were met without any outside funding.

In addition to these company revenue milestones, we’ve had a big year when it comes to awards and recognitions, and we’re always looking for ways to contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in our state. To save time and minimize redundancy for the judges, we’ve placed all those details in answer 6. below.

Text Request is a startup, but we haven’t followed the traditional startup path. Instead of taking venture capital, we chose to bootstrap — to create a sustainable and profitable business that does not need outside investors or their money.

We also believe in our hometown. Chattanooga is a mid-sized city in Southeast Tennessee that, in recent years, has become a hub for innovation. And although many startups and young businesses open up shop here, a good number then move operations to larger cities as they seek to expand their footprint. We believe that we can accomplish more growth right here.

Text Request serves more than 3,000 clients all across the US and Canada and yet remains committed to building a healthy business in the mid-sized city where our three co-founders were raised. And we balance our commitment to global impact with our desire to contribute to a thriving local business economy really well — we were a finalist for the global SaaS Awards in 2020, and were also named as one of Chattanooga’s Best Places to Work earlier this year.

Ultimately, we want to have the ability to build our product in a way that meets our customers’ needs. Bootstrapping our business and keeping our HQ local has helped us maintain the quality control of our product required to make the biggest impact for the small-to-medium-sized businesses we have sought to help since day one.
Website: https://www.textrequest.com/

Best Places to Work 2020 Announcement: https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/edge/story/2020/apr/30/best-places-work-text-request/521730/;

Two 2020 TechX Awards by the Chattanooga Technology Council: Text Request was named Tech Company of the Year, while co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Rob Reagan, was named Technology Leader of the Year during the 2020 Technology Excellence (TechX) Awards, presented by the Chattanooga Technology Council.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/text-request-picks-up-two-2020-techx-awards-301132014.html

Finalist for Spirit of Innovation by the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce: https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/edge/story/2020/nov/01/spirit-innovatifinalist-text-request-sends-pe/534459/

Finalist in Global SaaS Awards Announcement: https://www.teknovation.biz/chattanoogas-text-request-named-a-finalist-in-a-global-saas-competition/

Global SaaS Awards Details, Finalists, and Winners: https://www.cloud-awards.com/2020-software-awards-shortlist/

Participant in 36|86 Entrepreneurship Panel: https://www.theenterprisectr.org/four-local-businesses-to-speak-at-36-86-festival/

Hosted Startup Week Chattanooga Panel, “The Future of Entrepreneurship in Chattanooga”:https://sched.co/ejpv