Drift was founded in 2015 by David Cancel and Elias Torres in Boston. The company popularized the term “conversational marketing” and built a platform around the idea that B2B buyers don’t want to fill out forms and wait for a callback — they want answers now.
The core product is a chat widget that sits on your website and engages visitors in real time. Chatbots qualify leads by asking questions, booking meetings with sales reps, and routing conversations based on criteria like company size, page visited, or CRM data. The goal is to replace static lead capture forms with dynamic conversations.
Drift’s Revenue Orchestration platform expanded beyond chat to include email sequences, video messaging, and intent data. The Drift Intel feature identifies anonymous website visitors by company, even if they don’t engage with the chat.
Salesloft acquired Drift in February 2024, merging conversational marketing with sales engagement. The combined platform aims to cover the entire revenue workflow from first website visit to closed deal.
Before the acquisition, Drift had raised over $100 million and served thousands of B2B companies including Okta, Tenable, and Zenefits. The platform integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and most major CRM and marketing automation tools.
Pricing was enterprise-focused even before the acquisition, typically starting in the thousands per month. This positioned Drift firmly in the mid-market and enterprise segment rather than small business.
The Boston office remains a hub for the team, with Drift’s culture of “putting the customer first” being a defining characteristic of the brand David Cancel built.
