Tiago Paiva studied computer science at the University of Lisbon. In 2011 he and fellow student Cristina Fonseca entered a hackathon hosted by Twilio. They built a browser-based call center and won.
Paiva has said he wanted the first prize, a MacBook Air. The prototype got them into the 500 Startups batch 3, and in November 2011 they raised about $350,000. For the first two years he handled marketing, sales, support and product himself.
Money was tight. The team sometimes stretched one meal into three, and Paiva went without salary for stretches. He disliked phoning customers but had to, because he was the only salesperson. By about 2014 Talkdesk had reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue on angel money alone, and the first priced round came that year.
In July 2020 Talkdesk was reported at a $3 billion valuation. On 13 August 2021 it announced a $230 million Series D at over $10 billion, led by Whale Rock Capital and TI Platform Management, with nearly 2,000 employees. Every new hire still gets a MacBook Air on day one.