Contactually

About Contactually

Contactually operated as a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform provider, primarily targeting the real estate industry. The company was founded in 2011 by Zvi Band, Tony Cappaert, and Jeff Carbonella. The idea originated from co-founder Zvi Band's experience as a freelance developer, where he recognized the need for a systematic way to manage referrals and professional relationships. Band, a University of Maryland graduate with degrees in Computer Science and Economics, transitioned from a role at a large government consulting firm to entrepreneurship, initially starting a freelance development business before co-founding Contactually. Tony Cappaert, an MIT alumnus, brought experience from Microsoft's Bing Ads team and an impact investment firm.

The firm's business model was centered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription, offering various pricing tiers for its CRM platform. The platform was designed to help professionals, especially real estate agents and brokerages, manage and nurture their networks. Its core function was to centralize contacts from various sources like email and phone, and then intelligently prompt users to maintain engagement. The software automated follow-up reminders, organized contacts into user-defined categories called 'buckets', and provided communication templates. A key feature was its ability to apply a layer of intelligence, using machine learning for functions like 'Best Time to Email,' which suggested optimal outreach times based on past engagement to increase response likelihood. It also provided broker-level administration and reporting to drive agent productivity and adoption.

A significant milestone in the company's history was its acquisition by Compass, a real estate technology company, in February 2019. At the time of the acquisition, Contactually had raised approximately $12 million in venture funding and served numerous clients, including major real estate brokerages. The acquisition was a strategic move by Compass to accelerate the development of its own end-to-end platform for agents, integrating Contactually's technology and team. Following the acquisition, Contactually's team of approximately 30 employees joined Compass. For a period, existing customers could continue using the platform independently. However, the standalone Contactually service was officially discontinued on March 31, 2022, as its technology was fully absorbed into the proprietary Compass CRM.