OpenPhone and Daryna Kulya
This week, I spoke to Daryna Kulya who is the co-founder of OpenPhone, a modern business phone for startups and small businesses. OpenPhone adds a work phone number to your existing devices. No need to carry two phones or extra SIM cards. Daryna and co-founder Mahyar Raissi quickly joined Y Combinator and then launched their initial product in July 2018. A year ago, in April 2020, they launched version 2.0 as a culmination of some big product changes and have since seen their growth skyrocket.
How they recognized the shift they should make to evolve the product beyond just solo entrepreneurs to support teams with wide ranging use cases
How ensuring customers had a great experience and investing in reviews on B2B marketplaces has driven strong word of mouth signups
Daryna Kulya: My co-founder, Mahyar, and I started OpenPhone three years ago. There were a few things that gave us the idea. First, my co-founder was at a startup where his job was to find a business phone solution for their sales team. He looked in the market and was shocked by the lack of quality consumer friendly products. Phones are a very critical channel of communication for many businesses, but the software powering this channel was outdated, clunky, and hard to use. You're stuck with solutions literally from the 90s.
