Gmail Startups

Chat Desk, founded by Anato (formerly a Product Manager at Google working on Voice Search and Google Assistant), is a customer support platform that uses generative AI to help brands scale support and drive sales. Operating for over 6 years based in New York, the company has tripled annual revenue through strategic upselling to existing customers by expanding from initial entry points (like social media moderation at a few hundred dollars/month) to comprehensive multi-channel support solutions.

Code 42 is an enterprise data loss prevention and insider threat detection platform that helps organizations prevent employees and contractors from exfiltrating sensitive data. The company achieved $50M ARR after spinning out from its parent company (which sold the legacy CrashPlan product for $250M to private equity), and now serves 800+ customers including major security firms like CrowdStrike, Okta, and Splunk with pricing around $80-120 per employee per year. Founded within another company in 2015 and launched in 2017, Code 42 targets mid-market enterprises (1,000-5,000 employees) through intent-based sales and has several customers paying over $1M annually.

Baydin is an email productivity SaaS founded in January 2010 by Aye Moah, best known for Boomerang for Gmail, a plugin that enables users to schedule emails, set reminders, and track email engagement. The company builds tools designed to improve email workflow and productivity for individual and business users.

MixMax is a Gmail productivity plugin co-founded by Olof Mathe, a former Google Gmail designer. The tool enables users to track emails, schedule meetings, create email templates, and schedule sends. Limited traction data is available in this podcast show notes excerpt.

SaaS Group is an evergreen holding company founded by serial entrepreneur Tim Schumacher that acquires and operates SaaS businesses with the intention of running them indefinitely rather than flipping them. Since 2018, the company has acquired 20 businesses generating approximately $60M ARR across 300 employees, with financing sourced through debt lines of credit, operating cash flow, and a $25M equity round. The company's playbook focuses on identifying undermanaged businesses with growth potential and applying operational improvements while preserving founder legacies and company identities.

Keeping is a Gmail extension that adds helpdesk functionality directly into Gmail, allowing teams to manage customer support without leaving their inbox. Founded by Vincent Casar, the startup validated product-market fit through early cold email outreach to potential customers, then grew primarily through content marketing (the 'Growth Hacking Experiment' blog) and high-converting Quora answers (30-35% conversion rate). Vincent's approach emphasizes simple but disciplined tactics: persistent email follow-up (achieving 36-40% response rates after 3 emails), strategic Quora engagement, and early customer feedback.

Atrium is a sales management SaaS platform that helps sales managers and leaders use data-driven analytics to improve team performance. Founded by Pete Kazanji in 2016 after his experience at Monster Worldwide, the product instruments key sales KPIs (win rates, pipeline, customer-facing meetings, etc.) and uses statistical anomaly detection to surface actionable insights to non-technical sales managers. Pete pioneered the product through founder-led selling starting in 2018, acquiring a dozen customers before hiring his first sales rep in 2019.