Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Volt, a leading Messaging Operations (Ops) infrastructure platform that enables software companies to integrate with multiple SMS providers and streamline number registration compliance and delivery reporting, announced the closing of its $3 million seed round. Mercury led this funding round, which also included participation from Atento Capital, Uncorrelated Ventures, Stout Street Capital, and Yellow Rocks. The new funding round will enable Volt to further enhance and accelerate its product development and strategically expand its team.
The SMS marketplace has been growing significantly largely due to increased marketing and customer support efforts. And SMS has become the predominant method of communication among U.S. consumers, with average open rates of around 98%. This rapid growth of the SMS market coincided with recent regulatory shifts across U.S. phone carriers aimed at decreasing the level of spam messages but has made it nearly impossible for SMS providers and everyday brands to keep up.
Volt launched in mid-2022 and it was founded by Martin Langelo Lien and Matt Morfopoulos. The idea for the company was born out of the founders’ experience with the inefficiencies of compliance for SMS operations firsthand while running a text marketing company for three and a half years, during which they recognized a fundamental need for infrastructure to ensure compliance was maintained across carriers.
Volt was created to help companies manage the complexities of large-scale text messaging and significantly reduce the engineering hours spent on the upkeep of internal infrastructure. And through Volt’s centralized API, companies can effectively manage all of their SMS providers in one place, guide brands through the hurdles of registering phone numbers, and provide real-time SMS deliverability insights to ensure issues are resolved efficiently across providers.
Volt has achieved operational profitability and has exceptional revenue growth, increasing over 100% in the first quarter of 2024 alone. And Volt has partnered with some of the largest programmable communications technology companies in the market, including Twilio, Vonage, Telnyx, and Bandwidth along with a wide range of media, technology, and two-factor authentication platforms. And Volt works with a growing number of software vendors to help their customers stay compliant with carrier standards while delivering positive and authentic experiences within their SMS operations. Nearly half a billion messages have been processed on Volt’s platform thus far.
KEY QUOTES:
“Companies have been struggling with SMS even before phone carriers implemented the 10 Digit Long Code regulation in the spring of 2021. Now with increased complexities around regulations, it is more necessary than ever to safeguard companies from thousands of dollars in fines and fees for not abiding by rapidly-evolving rules and protocols. We started Volt to address these problems, starting with the most pressing issue: getting a phone number registered with the carriers in the first place. With no support from phone carriers or traditional SMS providers, software companies are forced to waste millions of dollars on critical but repeatable work. We are grateful for the support of our dedicated investors to tackle this problem head-on and look forward to continuing to build and advance our product suite.”
– Martin Langelo Lien, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Volt
“As we scale our team and capabilities, there are a ton of exciting opportunities we can tackle within the Messaging Ops space. With this latest round of funding we will continue to drive awareness around messaging ops, and stay focused on solving our partner’s biggest issues today, while supporting phone carriers’ goals of a spam-free SMS channel.”
– Matt Morfopoulos, Co-Founder and Head of Growth at Volt
“Volt is defining a needed category within SMS Messaging Operations and we have been impressed with their rapid success and disciplined approach to growth. Developer time is often wasted on building and maintaining SMS deliverability and compliance adherence, and we are confident that Volt will continue to serve as a trusted provider, improving infrastructure for SMS solutions for years to come.”
– Heath Butler, Venture Partner at Mercury Fund
“Businesses not only continue to face challenges in managing their SMS operations but are also up against a looming regulatory deadline to ensure that carrier compliance standards are met, exacerbating a critical infrastructure gap that has existed for some time in the SMS industry. Volt, founded by a highly technical team, delivers efficiency, automation, and cost-savings to ease this burden for software companies. I’m excited to be supporting Volt at this critical juncture and am looking forward to supporting their growth.”
– Salil Deshpande, General Partner at Uncorrelated Ventures
