Closed

The story of Close begins not with a product, but with a problem. In 2012, Steli Efti, Anthony Nemitz, and Thomas Steinacher were running a different company called Elastic Sales, a 'sales-as-a-service' firm for other startups. They discovered that existing CRMs were clunky and made their sales team's job harder, focusing more on data entry than on communication. So, they did what any resourceful founding team would do: they built their own internal tool to streamline their workflow. This 'secret sales sauce' was so effective that when other salespeople saw it, they wanted to buy it. Recognizing the demand, the founders pivoted. In January 2013, they publicly launched their internal tool as a product called Close.io. The .io domain was a practical choice at the time, as another startup already held the coveted Close.com domain. The company grew, funded primarily by its own customers, and established itself as a serious player in the CRM space for small and medium-sized businesses. However, the founders always had their eyes on the .com domain. The process to acquire it was a marathon, not a sprint. It took over five years of persistence and negotiation. Finally, in 2019, the company made a significant move. They successfully purchased the Close.com domain and rebranded the business to simply 'Close'. This wasn't just a name change; it was a signal to the market that Close had matured from a scrappy startup into a stable, long-term force in the industry.