Alex Quilici

It started off as a voicemail for carrier company and ran out of runway trying to sell to carriers, which turns out to be pretty difficult, right?

If you're trying to help them do something that affects consumers.

We then got stuck around for about four or five years where we were embroiled in a bunch of lawsuits over a feature we had.

They were all dismissed.

We pivoted to a call blocking company, raised the $5 million.

And that's really how we view email now is we've done almost everything with the $5 million.

I came in in 2007, 2008.

So very early in the life cycle.

So you were basically day one.

I've been through the first wave of trying to take a strategy someone else had and executing it with carriers, seeing that fail, moving to transition to a consumer company, seeing that struggle because of lawsuits and other challenges, and then pivoting to a call blocking company.

And now we're pivoting again, but to some degree to be call blocking for carriers and enterprises, not just consumers.

So it was pretty ugly.

We had four class action lawsuits over a feature we had where if you called me, it would automatically send you a text back saying, I'm busy, go to my website, send me an email, whatever the user wanted.

That was called auto reply.

People said, oh, that's violating TCPA and sued the founders personally, right?

And the executive team personally, as well as the company.

It took three years and about a quarter of a million dollars to get out of that mess.

Ultimately, the FCC found we were doing nothing wrong.

We're actually innovation that they like to see.

If someone calls, they're giving you permission to call them back.