Tiago Paiva is the CEO and founder of Talkdesk, Inc., a cloud-based contact center and AI software provider.
Early life and education
Tiago Paiva was born in 1987 in Portugal. Pavia started programming at the age of 15 and only stopped after college. Paiva graduated in Telecommunications Engineering and Computer Science at Instituto Superior Técnico. After college, Pavia still worked at Procter & Gamble as a developer in the financial arena, but he realized that this was not what he wanted to do in life.
Talkdesk’s Beginnings
In 2011, Tiago Paiva and Christina Fonseca noticed the paradigm regarding call centre software was not only sloppy but outdated. The idea of Talkdesk was born after several brainstorming sessions, like many others that over the years were moving to the role and they did not leave it. At one point, the concept that gave rise to the company that provides call centre solutions via the Internet (commonly known as “cloud” or cloud) emerged, with the possibility of integration with other platforms.
Pavia dragged his classmate, Cristina Fonseca, to the project and decided to run for a contest from Twilio, a US company developing voice and text solutions in the cloud to develop an application on this platform that had as a prize a laptop. Pavia and Fonseca built the first version of Talkdesk using Twilio’s API in 10 days, released a video on YouTube and had 1,000 people registered in the first week.
They were selected to present at Twilio’s conference in the US. There were two or three investors who liked their presentation and offered them $50,000. Pavia threw himself on his head and moved to San Francisco, where he currently lives, with the dream of establishing Talkdesk in Silicon Valley. They made it, and after winning, Pavia and Fonseca got invited to join 500 Startup’s third batch.
Tiago Paiva co-founded Talkdesk, a cloud-based contact center, and AI software provider, along with Cristina Fonseca in 2011 and raised $450,000. At the same time, Paiva is the Chief Executive Officer of the company.
In May 2012, Talkdesk established at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. In August 2014, the company received $3.15 million led by Storm Ventures. In June 2015, Talkdesk raised $15 million in a Series A funding round, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson with an existing investor Storm Ventures. This investment has used to develop the product, design, and engineering teams and to expand marketing and customer support efforts.
In October 2015, Talkdesk received another $6 million extensions round of the Series A with strategic investment led by Salesforce Ventures and participation from Talkdesk’s existing investors, by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Storm Ventures. Talkdesk has used these new funds to expand its engineering, product, and sales teams. With this latest funding added to the Series A, Talkdesk has received a total of $21M in this round. During this time, the company started to receive industry acknowledgment for its platform.
On October 27, 2015, Talkdesk declared the launch of Talkstart. The Talkstart Program gives technology startups with free Talkdesk call center software licenses to allow them to build a foundation of exceptional phone-based customer assistance and sales.
In April 2017, Talkdesk started AppConnect, a place where customers can relate with other vendors that cater to services adjacent to its offerings.
In October 2018, Talkdesk raised $100 million in new funding from Viking Global Investors and existing investor Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The round marks the company at north of $1 billion. Paiva verified to TechCrunch, but he refused to reveal the exact figure. Talkdesk, which applies machine learning and artificial intelligence to targets mid-market, enhance customer service, and enterprise businesses, counting IBM, Stitch Fix, Dropbox, and Farfetch as customers.
With the latest funding, it plans to make bigger to the U.K., as well as double down on its financing in AI. The company turned to be the first CCaaS Unicorn, and the fastest developing CCaaS provider globally, during October 2018.
Talkdesk launched the Talkdesk Innovation Fund created to inspire the future of customer experience. The company is committing $10 million after the Series B funding, to improve the development of solutions created to enhance the customer experience landscape. The Innovation Fund of Talkdesk grows on the accomplishment of Talkdesk AppConnect, the first modernization ecosystem formed exclusively for contact centers, including one-click installs of best-in-class solutions. With over 50 partners, AppConnect has modernized the way contact centers explore and add new capabilities.
In February 2019, with the 2019 North American Product Line Strategy Leadership Award, the cloud contact centre market of North America, Frost & Sullivan recognized Talkdesk for creating the Talkdesk Enterprise Cloud Contact Center. In May 2019, Talkdesk broadcasted Talkdesk Agent Assist, a personalized conversational assistant that proactively securing customer experience excellence supports frontline agents, and least agent effort. Talkdesk Agent Assist gives contact centres with an innovative tool created to lessen agent effort, enhance quality and lessen costs by reducing search and data entry tasks through Talkdesk iQ in-house AI capabilities.