Press Release
LivePerson CEO Marks 20 Years as a Public Company with Letter to LivePerson Community
To Our Employees, Customers, Shareholders, and Communities:
A month ago, I was looking forward to the 20th anniversary of LivePerson's IPO with great excitement, thinking of all the amazing people over the past 20 years that were instrumental in building our company and the letter I would write to commemorate the celebration. I couldn't have imagined how much would change in four weeks and that I would write this letter devastated by the fact that a notable twenty-three year old employee from our
Amidst this crisis, Liveperson's employees continue to move forward with force. We all get up in the morning and give our precious energies and time to our LivePerson endeavors even from our home offices. This is true courage — defined as "strength in the face of pain and grief."
Today's current events take me back to when we went public, as it was also a time of great crisis with the implosion of the dotcom bubble, followed later by the tragedy of 9/11. Perhaps the best way to recognize our 20th anniversary is to share some important lessons I learned during and following our IPO. These remain my guideposts when charting uncertain waters such as the current global health crisis.
First and foremost, when faced with adversity, you can choose to be a hero. LivePerson went public twenty years ago on
Second, empathy is critical to leading through a crisis. A year after we went public, we dropped to around
Third, an unimaginable crisis creates a path to helping others. In
As we look to the future, I am confident that the last twenty years have prepared us to face whatever we may encounter during this current global crisis and beyond. I am also proud that we are currently providing platforms to hospitals, medical professionals, and other critical services — in addition to the world's largest banks, telcos, and broadband providers — at a time when connection with the public is critical. LivePerson's services are essential to our customers and the current state of the world.
In closing, there's a poem that I would like to share that may capture what we all went through while at LivePerson, it is our Ithaka. Poem: Ithaka, by C. P. Cavafy
Best,
Rob
Ithaka, by C. P. Cavafy
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
About
LivePerson makes life easier for people and brands everywhere through trusted conversational AI. Our 18,000 customers, including leading brands like HSBC, Orange, GM Financial, and The Home Depot, use our conversational solutions to orchestrate humans and AI, at scale, and create a convenient, deeply personal relationship — a conversational relationship — with their millions of consumers. LivePerson was named to
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