Tremendous company history
The path less traveled to hypergrowth
Started GiftRocket as a location-based gift card company for consumers in 2010. Became profitable and steady.
Created a platform for businesses, called it Tremendous
Tremendous is now growing quickly
2010 - 2012
Launch, Flop, Profit
We founded GiftRocket in 2010 to address a consumer challenge: how to send someone a gift card to a place that doesn’t sell gift cards. In our first version, the sender specified an amount and any location; once the recipient checked in there, Foursquare-style, the money hit their PayPal account.
We went through Y Combinator in 2011 and then launched on TechCrunch. And it was a flop.
Hacker News was unreceptive and borderline-hostile. Business metrics weren’t any kinder to us – we averaged five gift card sales per day over the first three months. As Paul Graham told us, we were in the trough of sorrow.
We didn't give up. We improved the product and found a way to acquire users, and by 2012 GiftRocket was profitable. (See: TechCrunch)
2012 - 2018
Autopilot
For our investors, it didn’t make sense financially to stay involved with the business due to the slow growth. We bought out their positions by doubling their initial investments and put the company in self-driving mode. We moved on to other projects.
A few years later, we noticed that many of GiftRocket’s customers were businesses. They told us that our service was the most convenient and affordable way they could find to pay individuals in bulk. That got us thinking, and working again.
“I've purchased from GiftRocket several times now... and I LOVE it. GiftRocket really works out nicely as a present because in the end, the recipient isn't stuck with a card to a store they don't like - they get the cash. I've started using this at work (for my staff) and they love it. Very highly recommended!.”
L. M.
December 19th, 2014
2018 - 2020
A new hope
In 2018 we launched Tremendous, the B2B sibling of GiftRocket.
By adding traditional gift cards, we positioned ourselves against several incumbents in the bulk-gifting world. We compensated for a lack of brand recognition with two big advantages: better administrative tools for senders, and the willingness to develop custom features to win new business.
Before long, Tremendous became our new primary business. (GiftRocket keeps running, still in auto-pilot mode.) We realigned our business around B2B, spent a whole lot of time in sales meetings, and proved our value one customer at a time.
2021 - Today
Serving thousands, sending to millions
A decade after incorporation, we became a growth company.
We bulked up our engineering, customer success, and support to expand our technical and business capacity. By the end of 2021, we'd grown past 30 employees in six countries, powering over 10 million payouts for more than 3,000 businesses.
The next chapter
The number one limitation to our growth is our team size. We're hiring across all departments. If you're interested in working at a profitable, high-paying, fast-growing company, join us.
Join Us
