Having raised over $100M, Glia is poised to join the ranks of Estonia’s greats and do for businesses what Skype did for personal communication.
2020 tested everyone and everything in ways we didn’t think anyone needed to be tested. Among those acing all the tests has been Glia, a digital-first customer service technology provider with offices in Tallinn, Tartu, and NYC.
Glia’s award-winning, patented technology empowers businesses to communicate with their customers seamlessly. Frictionless customer service is a must-have even in the most uneventful times. But in a pandemic? When no one wants to stroll down to the bank or send another email that starts with “hope this finds you well”? Essential.
Enabling pandemic-proof customer service experiences catapulted Glia’s revenues up by 150% in 2020. It also led to an influx of $78M in funding in early 2021, making Glia lucky number 7 among Estonia’s best-funded startups.
But it’s not luck that got Glia where it is today. The company has been perfecting digital communication for customer-business interactions since 2012, with 9 of Finovate’s Best of Show trophies under its belt already. The pandemic just proved to be an accelerator on their trajectory to tech superstardom.
Like fellow tech giant and trailblazer Skype, Glia is following the time-honored Estonian tradition of using technology to reinvent communication. Their easy-to-integrate technology allows their clients (mostly banks, credit unions, and insurers) to communicate with customers through various channels — from website to chat to video to CoBrowsing — while making it feel like one uninterrupted interaction.
Hassle-free interactions that don’t have you on hold with the bank for hours, desperately pressing 1 to make the nightmare end? It’s not hard to see the appeal.
And indeed — growing fast to meet the demand and loaded with fresh funding, Glia is ready to give new meaning to the word scale. (As in, on a scale of 1-10 they’re hiring at a 10, from all over the globe.)
The game-changing people behind the game-changing tech
Glia’s ahead-of-the-curve approach to Digital Customer Service is rooted in the very basic human need to simplify interactions between organizations and people. People, unsurprisingly, are also at the core of the company’s success.
As Nate Meeks, VP of Strategic Initiatives, points out: “Great technology means little without great people to support it.”
Those would be the unstoppable Glianeers. Glia comes from the Greek word for glue and is, in a vast oversimplification of the underlying neuroscience, the glue that holds the nervous system together. Glianeers, quite fittingly, are the glue that holds Glia together.
Nate puts it in more simple terms: “Glianeers are exceptional.”
And while any company might make that claim about their people, Nate brings the receipts. “Many companies are more concerned with hiring at speed than helping candidates find the best place to build their careers. At Glia, we focus on each candidate. Sometimes that means turning down qualified candidates that just aren’t a fit for our culture.”
Beyond this two-way-street approach to hiring, actionable core values, open communication, and fierce collaboration make Glia a great place to work. 97% of Glianeers say so themselves, which is particularly impressive when you compare it to a 59% average at other companies.
Glia’s big-picture view of what makes a team WOW-worthy continues well past the hiring process. Engineering Manager Patricia Goh and Software Engineer Gabriel Kuslap both point out that every Glianeer can clearly see the value they create for the company. “Engineers start and end their day knowing exactly why they are doing their assigned tickets and how that fits into the bigger picture, quarterly and annually,” Patricia says. “It is apparent to us how we have a direct impact on a product that is used by millions, from our daily code deployments.”
Gabriel agrees. “When working on a feature, knowing the reasoning behind it is essential,” he says. “Finding the answers to questions like ‘Why is this needed now?’ and ‘What are the alternatives to the proposed solution?’ helps both the engineer and the quality of the product. Engineers should invest their time in solutions that have a positive impact on the business and the users of the product. At Glia, a considerable amount of time is spent on planning and reasoning about work that needs to be done. This, in turn, results in a higher-quality, more maintainable code base.”
Glia’s 2021 to-do list: hire you
Speaking of a maintainable base, Nate doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to Glia’s 2021 plans. “One of our biggest priorities is growing our team while maintaining our amazing culture,” he says.
Already working with massive players like Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas, Glia is well on its way to becoming the next household name in digital-first customer service. To that end, expanding the engineering teams in Tartu and Tallinn is one major focus for 2021. Much like the rest of the team, Gabriel is ready to welcome new co-workers into the mix. “New people bring a lot of cool new energy and ideas to the company,” he says.
Glia rocked 2020 and is set to do it again in 2021. If you’re looking for the perfect place to channel your energy and ideas, become a Glianeer to reinvent how companies communicate with people in the digital world.
Check out some of the roles at Glia and apply:
👉 Find more job offers on Glia’s career page
And stay tuned to see what else Glia is getting up to in 2021 — Nate has promised a few more big surprises.
Want to learn more about the life at Glia? Click on the picture and follow @gliainc on Instagram 🎉🎉🎉