TextNow at Ten

Reflecting on a decade of hard work, growth, and snack consumption.

It’s hard to believe that this month marks our 10-year anniversary as a company. Years ago, when I had the idea for the company as a student at the University of Waterloo, I had no idea what an amazing ride it would be. I’ll be sharing my top memories on social media over the next couple of days. Today, we have approximately 120 employees and have continued to grow rapidly.

TextNow by the numbers:

One way to celebrate the accomplishment of making the ten-year mark is to reflect on the numbers. Even I was surprised at how impressive the data is:

• Over 8 BILLION minutes of phone conversations. That’s 133.3 million hours. That’s 15,220 years. For context, 15,220 years is how long it’s been since the domestication of the pig. Back then, the Sahara wasn’t even a desert. That’s an astounding number of conversations.
• Over 28 BILLION text messages. Meaning enough text messages for every single person in the world to send 3 messages. Quick — what will your three texts be?
• 1.3 BILLION emojis were used on our app in the last year alone. We like to think our top-used emojis used indicate how happy our users are:? ? ? ?
• 25 million photos were sent over TextNow in the last year alone. For context, the Library of Congress of the United States only has 14.8 million photos in its entire collection.

Of course, we wouldn’t be anywhere without our team.

TextNow is almost 120 employees strong (and growing!), headquartered in Waterloo and San Francisco. Between all these folks, we’ve run a lot of lines of code, and enjoyed a lot of snacks, including:

• 504 pounds of chocolate covered almonds
• 140 kegs of beer
• Almost 9,000 cans of La Croix (Mango 4 ever)
• About a quarter million cups of coffee

We’ve also traveled approximately 1,200,000 miles between Waterloo, San Francisco and other office spaces for work.I can’t wait to tackle our next decade!