I woke up this morning to an email notifying me that a competitor is claiming we're going out of business. A VP at this competitor, Sendbird, sent the following email to our customers:
Sendbird's VP of Revenue Operations, Jeffrey Poon fictitiously claims that Stream is running out of cash and is reducing staff by 30% in an effort to get customers to switch to Sendbird.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think companies should compete on product and deliver great value to their customers. Deceiving customers and spreading fear is dishonest. Many Sendbird customers have migrated to Stream, but they do so not because of lies but because of the quality of our SDKs and APIs.
We want to address two things:
- We want to set the record straight on their claims with this blog post
- Customers or prospects who received these lies, please let us know and email CS@getstream.io
Setting the Record Straight
1. Stream is Default Alive
Sendbird claims we have less than 12 months of cash. This is not accurate.
Nextdoor, Strava, and Midjourney are examples of large apps that have adopted Stream. Stream now powers activity feeds, chat, and video for over a billion end users.
Due to this growth, we are considered default alive and not running out of cash. Even if revenue were to stop growing, we have over 28 months of cash runway and this number would continue increase every month due to revenue growth.
2. Stream is Growing
In his InMail, Jeffrey accused Stream of an employee reduction (RIF) of 30%, which is comical. All you have to do is look up Stream on LinkedIn to see that our employee count is up and Sendbird is down. LinkedIn stats are not super accurate, but the trends line up with our internal numbers. Stream is growing, and we've not had layoffs in the last two years.
3. Sendbird is Not More Financially Stable
While we don't know the exact numbers, and I refuse to speculate like Sendbird does, there is some public information:
- Sendbird raised at a very high revenue multiple and valuation, one that it seems unlikely they will grow into that
- Apptopia doesn't show many large new apps using Sendbird's SDK
- Several of their largest customers have stopped using them; take Reddit and Gojek, for example
- Many customers are switching from Sendbird to Stream
- Sendbird's CRO just left the business
- Various team members have been fired recently
A Note to Our Customers & Prospects
It's unfortunate that we have to write a blog post like this to address these claims. Companies should focus on delivering value to their customers and shipping a great product. Healthy competition is fine; lying to prospects and customers isn't.
If you have received a salacious email from Sendbird regarding Stream, please forward it to our Customer Success team CS@getstream.io. We are trying to understand the extent of the damages.Â
Want to Drop Sendbird?
Our immediate response to this issue is increased incentives to switch from Sendbird to Stream. Be sure to contact our sales team if you want to learn more.