Gesmer Updegrove LLP

More than 300,000 small businesses, associations and nonprofits trust Constant Contact to help them connect with their audience—making the company a major email marketing player. But who did Constant Contact trust when they themselves were  starting out as a small business?

Gesmer Updegrove helped Constant Contact incorporate as Roving Software in 1995, move to its new brand and business model in 2004, and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the company right up to its public offering and listing on NASDAQ in October 2007.  Of course, there were many steps and bumps in the road for the Company right from the word “go” through the words: “go public.” Along the way, Gesmer partner, Tom Durkin, and others in firm were involved in:

• Multiple rounds of venture financing, including the last pre-public round with Greylock Ventures;
• Cleaning up and restructuring the firm’s capital structure during difficult economic times following the .com bubble;
• Attracting and retaining a professional management team, including the current CEO, Gail Goodman, who has been at the helm since 1999 (Gail was subsequently named “Executive of the Year” at the 2009 American Business Awards and the New England Regional winner of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award);
• Transitioning from a software product to a software as a service offering and devising the service agreements that enable that delivery; and
• Overcoming SPAM obstacles and getting Constant Contact “white-listed” through  strong partnerships with ISPs—a vital and complicated accomplishment for an email provider where deliverability rates are mission critical.

The Waltham, MA-based company has evolved from a small startup to a leading provider of email marketing and survey tools that help enterprises like retailers and restaurants begin dialogues and stay in constant contact with their customers. Just as Gail and the management team stayed in constant touch with Tom and Gesmer Updegrove as they built their winning company.