Shift Messenger

01 / WHAT IT BUILT

What the company did

Shift Messenger was a San Francisco startup founded in 2014 by Austin Vedder (ex Redbeacon, BCG; Dartmouth and Harvard Business School), a Y Combinator alum. It built a group messaging app for hourly shift workers — retail, hospitality and healthcare — to post shifts needing coverage, swap shifts with coworkers, and chat with their whole team, all without sharing phone numbers or Facebook accounts (a privacy edge for workplaces with hundreds of employees). Users reached 'thousands of people across hundreds of workplaces' including branches of Starbucks, Niketown and the Apple Store. In May 2015 it raised a $1.5 million seed round led by Version One Ventures, with Golden Venture Partners, Kapor Capital, Commerce Ventures, NewGen Venture Partners, Venrock and QueensBridge Venture Partners.

03 / EVENT HISTORY

Events in the structured record

1. 2014
   Founded

   Austin Vedder founds Shift Messenger in San Francisco (YC alum) — a group messaging app for shift workers to manage schedules and swap shifts.

2. 2015
   Seed round

   On May 27, 2015 Shift Messenger raises a $1.5M seed round led by Version One Ventures; the app serves thousands of workers across hundreds of workplaces, and launches a web version for workers without smartphones.