Letter from Relay’s CEO announcing our $27 million fundraise

Today we are thrilled to formally announce our $27 million fundraise and introduce Relay Commerce, an operator and acquirer of SaaS businesses, starting in e-commerce. 

Who is Relay?

We’re a fully remote, global team operating three e-commerce software businesses to date - Fomo, Pop, SmartrMail, each a beloved brand and sought after solution in the toolkit of some of your favorite e-commerce merchants. We’re building for the SMB e-commerce merchant that wants enterprise-grade functionality made accessible to the sorts of teams that wear many hats. We’re also pairing our team’s knowledge of scaling software businesses with our appetite for acquiring bootstrapped software businesses.  

Why bootstrapped founders?

We have immense respect for the community, who builds with the bottom line in mind from day 1. That long term orientation and focus on stability requires particularly thoughtful business construction, and we’ve seen across our portfolio a keen attention to unit economics and customer-obsessed building. While at times less visible in the headlines, bootstrapped founders build great businesses ready to scale. 

There are tens of thousands of bootstrapped SaaS founders with different motivations to sell. Many founders are energized by the “0 to 1” experience of building a business but not the “1 to 10” experience of scaling. Maybe they have a second, or third, idea they are more excited about and want to focus their pursuit. Maybe they just simply want to take chips off the table as they reach a different point in their life. Relay was created so that they could pass the baton knowing we will invest in their brands and teams and continue the journey. 

At Relay we have assembled a team of, what I like to call, experienced B2B SaaS “master builders” and operators to guide our growing family of software businesses. Builders who are extremely skilled in innovation and revenue optimization, who cut their teeth scaling companies including ConvertKit, ManyChat, Back in Stock, and LeadDyno. Our team is on a mission to ‘grow the founder’s legacy’ with our unique environment and playbook that will enable any business we are entrusted with to become a bigger winner and any team member that joins Relay to become a master builder.

We’re also joined by our incredibly talented and supportive investors who have worked in tandem with us to execute our vision. We’re grateful for the support from Primary Venture Partners, Twelve Below, AlleyCorp, Max Ventures, and TriplePoint Capital and proud to be part of their respective family of companies. 

So what’s next? We’re already hard at work executing on and accelerating the roadmaps of our portfolio companies with continued investment in their people, processes and products. And as we build the Relay portfolio and team, we’re always interested in meeting with founders and anyone excited by our vision - meet us on the starting line.

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Ricardo Hinds

Co-founder & CEO - Relay Commerce

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