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Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a cloud-based platform designed for work management, enabling teams and organizations to plan, capture, track, automate, and report on work at scale through an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in , the company was initially incorporated as Navigo Technologies, Inc., before being renamed Smartsheet.com, Inc. in 2006 and in 2017. It empowers users across industries to drive productivity and innovation without requiring coding expertise, offering features such as customizable forms, real-time , workflow automation, dashboards for reporting, and integrations with enterprise tools like Microsoft Office 365 and . In January 2025, Smartsheet was taken private through an acquisition by and for $8.4 billion. As of October 2025, Smartsheet employs over 3,000 people and serves more than 100,000 customers in 190 countries, including more than 80% of companies and 16.7 million active users globally. The platform has evolved to incorporate capabilities, such as AI-powered insights and , to enhance and streamline processes. As of the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, the company reported annualized recurring revenue of $1.133 billion, reflecting 15% year-over-year growth driven by enterprise adoption and AI innovations. Smartsheet has received notable industry recognition, including being named a Leader in the for Collaborative Work Management for the third consecutive year in 2025, highlighting its completeness of vision and ability to execute. The company's mission focuses on empowering individuals and teams to move from ideas to impact quickly, supporting a range of use cases from to and . It also maintains commitments to corporate responsibility, including social impact programs and sustainability efforts.

Company

Founding and operations

Smartsheet was founded in 2005 as Navigo Technologies, Inc. by Brent Frei, a former CEO of Software, along with Eric Brown, Creason, Mader, and other early team members. The company's initial focus centered on developing collaborative tools designed to enable efficient work execution without requiring expertise. Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, at 500 108th Avenue NE, Suite 200, Smartsheet maintains additional offices in locations including Boston, Massachusetts; and in the ; , ; ; and , . This global footprint supports its operations across multiple regions. As of 2025, Smartsheet employs over 3,000 people and serves customers in 190 countries. The company operates as a software-as-a-service () provider of work management software, with a centered on subscription-based revenue that drives enterprise adoption in sectors such as IT, , and operations. In January 2025, the company was acquired by private equity firms and in an $8.4 billion deal and taken private.

Leadership and workforce

Mark Mader, a co-founder of Smartsheet, served as the company's CEO from its inception in 2005 until his retirement at the end of September 2025, during which he guided the organization from a startup to a prominent provider with over 16 million users across various industries. Under Mader's leadership, Smartsheet achieved significant milestones, including its in 2018 and expansions into markets, fostering a culture of innovation in collaborative work management. Following Mader's departure, Sunny Gupta, co-founder and former CEO of Apptio, assumed the role of Executive Chair and Acting CEO in July 2025, focusing on accelerating AI integrations and enhancing enterprise work management capabilities to position Smartsheet as a leader in intelligent collaboration platforms. In October 2025, Rajeev Singh was appointed as permanent CEO, succeeding Gupta in day-to-day operations while Gupta continued as Executive Chair to provide strategic oversight on AI-driven growth and global enterprise expansion. This leadership transition emphasized Smartsheet's pivot toward AI-enhanced tools for streamlined workflows and deeper enterprise adoption. Brent Frei, another co-founder, played a key role in Smartsheet's early development and served on the from 2005 through June 2024, contributing strategic guidance during the post-IPO phase that supported the company's scaling and product evolution. His involvement helped shape Smartsheet's market positioning before he shifted focus to other ventures. Smartsheet's workforce culture has been recognized for fostering employee satisfaction and innovation, earning accolades such as being named one of the Best Companies to Work For in 2019 by (ranked #12 in the large company category) and the , as well as in 2021 by the for its Australian office. Additionally, the company was ranked in the top 10 of Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies list in the Enterprise category for 2023, highlighting its commitment to a supportive and creative work environment. These recognitions reflect Smartsheet's emphasis on diversity, professional development, and work-life balance across its global team of over 3,000 employees.

Product

Core features

Smartsheet employs a spreadsheet-like interface, resembling traditional tools such as , where users organize data through customizable rows and columns for efficient entry and management. Rows represent individual items like tasks or records, while columns define attributes such as status, dates, or assignees, allowing for flexible data structuring without predefined templates. This supports by indenting sub-rows under parent rows to depict relationships, aiding in task organization and visualization. The interface incorporates formulas for computational tasks and basic , initiated by entering an (=) in a to perform operations like addition, summation (e.g., function), or conditional checks (e.g., IF statements). These formulas enable dynamic , such as calculating totals or automating status updates based on values, and can autofill across rows for consistency. is built-in, permitting multiple to the grid simultaneously; visual indicators, such as user avatars, active participants, and changes propagate instantly to all viewers. Core project management elements include task tracking via row-based entries with assignable fields, dependencies that link tasks to automatically adjust start and end dates (e.g., using predecessor columns), and row-level attachments for files like documents or images. Notifications occur through configurable alerts, triggered by sheet changes to inform users of updates, and reminders based on due dates to ensure timely actions. Forms provide a streamlined method for , allowing creators to build customizable input interfaces that populate the grid upon submission, ideal for gathering feedback or requests from non-users. Security is enforced through role-based permissions, assigning levels such as Owner (full control), Admin (management without ownership transfer), Editor (modify content), and Viewer (read-only access) to control interactions. logs, accessible via the activity , record all sheet views, shares, and changes—including who made them, when, and details like "Row 4 status changed from In Progress to Complete"—with export options for up to 90 days. Smartsheet complies with GDPR for data privacy and SOC 2 Type II for controls, undergoing annual third-party to verify protections like and access management. Accessibility spans desktop web browsers and mobile apps for and , enabling on-the-go updates to the grid. Offline support is available for mobile forms, where submissions queue and sync upon reconnection, while all other changes sync in across devices via the cloud platform.

Advanced capabilities

Smartsheet provides multiple visualization options to support complex project tracking and workflow management, extending beyond the basic grid interface. These include Gantt charts, which display task timelines, dependencies, baselines, and critical paths for scheduling oversight; boards via the Card view, enabling drag-and-drop organization of tasks by status for agile methodologies; views for date-based event planning and reminders; and Timeline views for high-level project roadmaps that aggregate data into interactive summaries. These views allow users to switch perspectives dynamically without altering underlying data, facilitating better decision-making in enterprise environments. The platform's Resource Management module offers advanced tools for enterprise-scale allocation and oversight. Capacity planning features enable monitoring of team bandwidth through a dedicated Capacity View, which visualizes workloads across multiple projects to prevent overcommitment and identify underutilized resources. Workload balancing tools support real-time adjustments by allocating tasks based on individual availability, skills, and project demands, while portfolio oversight provides aggregated insights into resource utilization across initiatives, aiding in prioritization and optimization. These capabilities integrate with core sheets to forecast demands and ensure balanced distribution without manual spreadsheets. As of 2025, Smartsheet incorporates enhancements to automate insights and streamline interactions. Vision analyzes sheet data to generate contextual insights, such as trend detection and anomaly identification, while auto-generating visualizations like burndown charts for progress tracking and graphs for forecasting. , bolstered by the 2018 acquisition of Converse.AI, powers features like Smart Flows, which create multi-step automations from plain-language prompts, and NLP-driven search for querying data intuitively. In November 2025, at the ENGAGE conference, Smartsheet unveiled an agent-first platform as the next evolution of Intelligent Work , introducing Smarts Agents for autonomous task execution, enhanced , and unified -data to elevate productivity. These tools prioritize data privacy by processing inputs within Smartsheet's secure environment using large language models tailored to user sheets, without using customer data to train external models. Smartsheet supports extensive integrations to embed workflows into broader ecosystems, connecting with over 175 third-party applications for seamless data flow. Key examples include bidirectional syncing with for notifications and collaboration, for document embedding and sharing, for CRM updates, and for issue tracking alignment. The platform's enables custom extensions, allowing developers to build tailored connectors or automate data exchanges beyond pre-built options, enhancing scalability for complex operations.

History

Early years

Smartsheet was incorporated in June 2005 as Navigo Technologies, Inc. in , with a vision to develop software that enabled leaders to track and manage organizational objectives without requiring coding skills. In 2006, the company launched its flagship product, Smartsheet, initially as a web-based that shifted focus to empower frontline workers by allowing them to track tasks, share updates, and connect files in real time. Unlike traditional spreadsheets, which often led to fragmented data across multiple files, Smartsheet emphasized a "single version of truth" for project information, ensuring all team members accessed the most current and unified view. By 2008, feedback revealed the platform's interface was overly complex and "enterprisey," with a steep hindering broader adoption. To address this, the team made a pivotal decision to rebuild the entire platform from the ground up, rewriting the code to prioritize intuitive and . This overhaul reduced the learning curve by 40%, making the tool more accessible for everyday users while enhancing its ability to handle growing workloads without performance issues. In 2010, Smartsheet reached key milestones in its pre-IPO growth, including the hiring of its first dedicated representative to formalize efforts. During this period, the gained traction among small teams and nonprofits, such as and , which appreciated its simplicity for coordinating projects and maintaining a centralized source of data to support mission-driven work. These early users, often rank-and-file managers, adopted Smartsheet to streamline and ensure without the need for extensive training or IT resources.

Expansion and IPO

In 2016, Smartsheet launched Control Center, a tool designed to automate project creation from templates, manage changes across portfolios, and standardize workflows for enterprise-scale operations. This feature addressed the need for consistency in repeatable projects, enabling organizations to deploy blueprints that update dynamically without manual intervention. The following year, in 2017, Smartsheet hosted its inaugural ENGAGE customer conference in , from September 18-20, gathering users to explore platform advancements and share best practices. Amid this product innovation, Smartsheet experienced robust revenue growth, reaching $111.3 million in fiscal year 2018 (ended January 31, 2018), a 66% increase from the prior year. This momentum, built on expanding adoption among enterprises, culminated in the company's on April 27, 2018, when shares of Class A began trading on the under the SMAR. Priced at $15 per share, the IPO raised $150 million in gross proceeds from 10 million shares. Prior to going public, Smartsheet had secured over $121 million in venture funding from investors including Insight Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and Sutter Hill Ventures. To support its growing international footprint, Smartsheet expanded its office network in the late , opening a location in in 2017 and establishing offices in and in 2018. These moves facilitated targeted outreach to global enterprise clients, such as , whose services department adopted Smartsheet for program management to enhance transparency in activities and budgets. By enabling real-time visibility and informed decision-making, the platform helped streamline cross-team coordination on complex initiatives. Preceding the 2021 milestone of further integrations, Smartsheet evolved its reporting and visualization tools in the late 2010s, notably introducing Sights dashboards in March 2016 to provide configurable, overviews of collaborative work. These dynamic dashboards aggregated data from sheets, reports, and attachments into interactive widgets, allowing users to monitor progress, metrics, and trends without leaving the platform. Enhancements to reporting capabilities followed, integrating with Control Center to automate portfolio-level summaries and cross-sheet formulas for scalable insights.

Recent developments

Following its in 2018, Smartsheet pursued strategic acquisitions to expand its platform capabilities. In early 2019, the company acquired , a provider, to enhance features. Later that year, in , Smartsheet acquired 10,000ft, a resource planning tool, to bolster . Additionally, while Converse.AI, an developer, was acquired in 2018, its supported post-IPO AI enhancements for collaborative . In September 2020, Smartsheet completed its largest acquisition to date by purchasing Brandfolder, a platform, for $155 million in cash and stock; the service was subsequently rebranded as Brandfolder by Smartsheet to align with its ecosystem. In September 2024, Smartsheet announced it would be taken private in an all-cash transaction valued at $8.4 billion by and , with shareholders receiving $56.50 per share—a 33% premium over the prior closing price. The deal, approved by stockholders in December 2024, closed on January 22, 2025, delisting Smartsheet from the and enabling a focus on long-term innovation under private ownership. Leadership transitioned in mid-2025 amid this shift. On August 5, 2025, Smartsheet announced that longtime CEO Mark Mader, who had led the company for nearly two decades, would retire from his role and the board effective September 30, 2025. co-founder Sunny Gupta, then serving as executive chair, assumed the position of acting CEO immediately. On October 6, 2025, technology industry veteran Rajeev Singh was appointed as permanent CEO, succeeding Gupta. Smartsheet continued to advance its integrations through product updates in 2025. The company released its Forward update series, including Edition 1 in highlighting -supported workflows and Edition 2 in focusing on -scale for and . In 2025, Smartsheet debuted Intelligent Work Management, unifying , data, and people to accelerate execution with features like Smart Agents and . Complementing these, a 2025 examined adoption trends in and , finding that adoption is racing ahead of readiness and emphasizing the need for unified systems. In October 2025, Smartsheet was named a Leader in the for Collaborative Work Management for the third consecutive year, recognized for its vision and execution in -driven work platforms.

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