It’s 2022 and Outplay’s virtual office is bustling with energy and excitement over the new year.

What’s happening at our office? Oh, the usual -

New employees are getting a virtual tour of the product, culture, and people;
teams are freeing up their packed calendars to speak to either prospects or long-term customers;
everyone’s looking at the new quarter’s targets - getting ready to unveil new features.

2021 was quick and long at the same time. It flew past us, but mostly it felt like we were reliving the same day over and over again. Kind of like groundhog day, don’t you think? But as much as we got settled into our routine, this year brought in a lot of changes and challenges.

When we look back, here’s how 2021 was for Outplay and the team.

Funding after funding 

In March 2021, we were overjoyed when we found out that we had just bagged $2 million as the seed funding from Sequoia India’s Surge program. And this happened within just a year of starting Outplay. But what left us stunned was when we received our Series A funding from Sequoia capital itself, in July 2021 - i.e. just 4 months after getting our seed funding. We raised our spirits along with $7.3 million in this round.

The increased trust from our customers and investors only pushed us to outperform ourselves and help our existing/ future users outplay easily. 

SUGGESTED READING: ANNOUNCING OUR SERIES A FUNDING FROM SEQUOIA!   

Hitting the lucky number 100

At Outplay, we appreciate every ounce of feedback that we get from our customers. At the end of a challenging day, reading our customers’ testimonials and reviews really puts a smile on our faces and gets us ready & recharged for the next day.

And so, our customer success team has always ensured to get feedback from our customers, so that we’re aware of what they like about Outplay and where we can improve. Seeing Outplay touch 100 reviews on G2 (a popular review platform) helped us get into our customers’ minds and discover that we’re really making a stark difference in the sales world. 

2021 gave us a chance to truly understand what our customers thought about Outplay and what more we could do for them. We didn’t just take G2 by storm, it was also raining reviews on sites like Capterra, TruePilot, and PipeDrive.

Thanks to the immense love from our customers, we were voted as ‘Momentum leader’, ‘High-performer’, ‘Easiest to do business with’, and other powerful titles for the year 2021. 

Want to read some G2 reviews? Find them here.

Our chrome extension takes off 

As a sales engagement platform, we understand the importance of prospecting quickly and accurately. And as a sales rep, you need to pull yourself away from time-consuming tasks.

We wanted our customers to experience a faster way of prospecting, where they could capture prospects with a single click - without going back and forth between several tabs.

Thus, we introduced our Chrome extension - Outplay connect! Customers could now add more meetings to the pipeline and increase their productivity rate - all in a flash.

You can verify/send emails, gather prospect data, and perform a lot more solely using our chrome extension.

SUGGESTED READING: INTRODUCING OUTPLAY CONNECT, THE NEW CHROME EXTENSION BY OUTPLAY 

We finally say hi: in person 

While working through a virtual office and speaking to your teammates through zoom calls or slack huddles, there always lies some curiosity in what it would be like to meet the entire team in person and wondering when the meet-up would actually take place.

Till the dates were finalized, every meeting would end with a routine question - “So, when is the company retreat?”

October 2021 allowed us to plan the dates, places, and activities for the much-awaited retreat.

Ouplayers met each other in Goa, India and the ones situated in the USA took a trip down to Miami, Florida! We bonded with each other, had our first in-person townhall, danced as much as we could, and went around places together.

We finally got to see the faces behind the screens and the retreat instilled a sense of belongingness - helping us come closer as a team. 

It’s pouring integrations

2021 welcomed a lot of integrations with Outplay - in an effort to make your lives easier. We wanted you to tie Outplay with your favorite tools and help you enhance your outreach.

Here are the platforms we integrated with:

• Gong
• Salesforce
• Hubspot
• Pipedrive
• Zoho
• Vidyard
• Zapier

Most of these have a native bi-directional integration with Outplay - letting your data get updated on both platforms simultaneously, hands-free. 

SOC2 Compliance done and dusted

Last year, Outplay successfully completed the System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type I audit. We have always ensured the safety of our customers' data and this was a validation of Outplay's commitment to its customers and users.

A SOC 2 report is for organizations that store and process the information of their clients. This is a form of assurance to the customers that the information you hold is not available to anyone but the intended recipients.

The entire team at Outplay ensured in completing the encryption and compliance within a few days. To make our system more secure and guarantee complete security of our customers’ data, we all joined hands together to finish the process as soon as possible.  

2022 might see us achieve SOC 2 Type 2 Compliance next! 

SUGGESTED READING: OUTPLAY IS NOW SOC 2 TYPE I COMPLIANT‍

Non-stop features 

We’re always ready to launch brand new features for our customers. Our roadmap not only includes the features that we’d like to launch as a company, but also the feature requests passed on by our existing users. After all, what is a product if it doesn’t solve the customers’ needs?

2021 let us expand our product and engineering team and also allowed us to bring in new features to the table.

We introduced email alias, crowdsourced sequence library, bounced prospect reach-outs, call waiting notification, SSO with Okta, and so much more!

Every month housed around 10 features or so, all of which helped our customers increase their productivity and conduct high-quality outreach.

Accelerate 

In December, we conducted our first-ever virtual sales summit, called Accelerate. We welcomed some of the best sales coaches and leaders who shared their insights, secrets, and tips - helping the attendees go on a journey of sales development with them.

Each session was filled with a lot of information, takeaways, plenty of interaction between the speaker and the attendees, virtual booths for folks to speak to each other and build their connections.  

At the end of the summit, we saw a lot of positive reviews from folks about their experience with Accelerate. We saw happy speakers, satisfied attendees, and delighted Outplayers. 

If you want access to all the videos, go here. 

Going from 10 to 70+ 

We started with a small team of 10-15 employees. And now? Now we’re a team of 70+ Outplayers - hailing from different backgrounds, regions, and interests.

We’re proud to see our team expanding so quickly, and this would only mean more ideas, better customer satisfaction, and inching closer to our company goal.

Either through employee referrals or job postings, we’ve been hiring across teams, for various functions/roles. And recently, we conducted an offline hiring drive!

Our team arrived in RGKUT Basar College, Telangana with an aim to hire the next set of Outplayers for the year 2022. We successfully selected 8 bright minds and offered them a role at Outplay in no time.

Having more members on your team really makes you dance with joy and also know that you have more members who are ready to Outplay, with you. 

If you’d like to be a part of our vibrant team, now’s your chance. You can head over to our careers page and check if there’s a role that you could fit into: Careers Page. 

2021 was eventful for us. One year introduced a lot of changes and made us realize that we can climb the ladder of success easily, together. In 2022, we’ll see a lot more updates, transformations, and different ways in which each of us will be Outplaying.

2022, here we go!