RocketBolt joins 500 Startups Family in Batch 19

Dinin, his cofounder Matt Hofstadt, and director of business development Andy Roth join the B2B track in the 44-company 500 Startups Batch 19 hosted in Mountain View, CA, as 500 Startups announced on their blog on Saturday. 

The bi-coastal email and lead-tracking SaaS company helps thousands of users know who is opening messages where and when while aggregating what those potential leads are doing on a company’s website, social media channels, and elsewhere. 

As part of its acceptance, RocketBolt picks up $150,000 in investment from the seed program, which Dinin says is part of a yet-to-be-announced round that includes prominent Triangle investors. Previous investors include The Startup Factory, a local seed fund, who also invested in fellow 500 portfolio company CareLuLu before they joined the program. (We looked at the full TSF portfolio earlier this year.)

The team has been in California since mid October, focusing on sales strategy and execution with their batch mates. 

Lupin Campos, an entrepreneur in residence at 500 and a self-described “moderator” for the B2B track of Batch 19 says the 500 team is “very happy to have them there, and that they add a lot of value” to the collaborative problem solving among the global cohort. 

The temporary move away from North Carolina fits what Dinin describes as his plan for the growing company. 

“The four month program is a fantastic opportunity to connect with the kinds of resources that enable rapid scaling,” he says.

This summer, RocketBolt’s gmail plugin topped the productivity category in the Google Chrome store, briefly crashing their site and deepening the company’s traction in a crowded marketing tech space. Dinin says that he wanted capitalize on what he calls “high velocity pipeline” of the company’s freemium model with an infusion of West Coast funding. 

During one conversation a potential investor asked Dinin “You are doing better than 90 percent of the companies I see. How come I haven’t heard of you?” 

The next step in the path to closing interested West Coast investors was validation from a known source, like 500. A couple of strategic referrals later, Dinin says he was contacted by the seed program. 

For day-to-day business development, growth is the only focus. Roth says the new venue provides a chance to learn new tactics in an environment tailored for B2B companies. 

“There’s a certain ‘been there, done that’ quality, in a good way, out here in the Valley,” says Roth. “North Carolina has this scrappy quality, and I love the community in the Triangle. Those [qualities] can’t exist at the same time.” 

For 500, picking RocketBolt is at least a partial fulfillment of their commitment to diversity, in this case investing in companies outside Silicon Valley, but more importantly, a validation of the company’s business prospects. 

“What we like about RocketBolt is that they are solving a common problem in a unique way. We were attracted to the simplicity of the product,” says Campos. “They are sharp, focused founders.” 

RocketBolt will present at the batch demo day on February 15.