Venture capital firm Social Capital has bought Hustle, a US-based messaging app developer backed by internet technology group Alphabet and enterprise software providers Salesforce and Twilio, for an undisclosed amount.
Hustle provides bulk messaging software that helps users send out one-to-one personalised text messages for marketing, recruitment and fundraising campaigns. Its customers include the American Federation of Teachers, New York University and Sierra Club.
The company had raised $40m since being founded in 2014. It closed a $30m series B round in mid-2018 led by venture capital firm Insight Partners that also featured GV and Salesforce Ventures, corporate venturing subsidiaries of Alphabet and Salesforce.
Salesforce Ventures had already joined Twilio unit Twilio.org Impact Fund in Hustle’s $8m series A round in 2017 together with Foundation Capital, GSV Acceleration, Higher Ground Labs, Kapor Capital, New Media Ventures and Omidyar Network.
The series A round was filled out by Canvas Ventures, Designer Fund, Index Ventures, Matrix Partners and Social Capital, all of which had participated in its $3m seed round the year before.
Social Capital founder and CEO Chamath Palihapitiya said: “As a scalable mobile platform that leverages machine learning to process billions of interactions at a time, Hustle can refine these critical interactions and foster greater connectivity between community-based organisations, non-profits, corporations and the people they serve.”
Steven Pease, chief executive of Hustle, added: “In today’s climate, Hustle is poised to play an increased role in the communities and networks we support and engagement on our platform has never been greater.”