20 Years of Smartsheet: Pioneering the Future of Intelligent Work Management

This year marks two decades of Smartsheet growth, innovation, and unlocking opportunities for millions globally. As we celebrate 20 years, we’re not just looking back at our journey. We’re charging ahead with a bold vision of a future where people and agentic AI work together to accelerate results. This is Intelligent Work Management, and we believe it's the next horizon.

From our founding 20 years ago, our mission has been constant: to empower anyone to drive meaningful change. Back then, organizations grappled with fragmented work across emails, documents, and spreadsheets—a challenge that, remarkably, many still face today. Smartsheet emerged as the essential cloud-based hub, bringing collaboration and clarity to people’s work.

We offered something spreadsheets never could: a single source of truth presented in a common language anyone could understand, with a structure that enabled reporting, alerts, and better data quality.

Early adopters—often frontline managers—saw the value and began championing Smartsheet within their organizations. As our ambition grew, so did our usage. We broadened our vision to serve not just individuals and teams, but entire departments and enterprises. To support our growing customer base, we expanded globally, building teams in Asia, Latin America, and EMEA, and establishing a robust ecosystem of hundreds of partners to accelerate market adoption and serve our customers with greater scale and speed.

Some of our team members in our Costa Rica office, which opened in 2022

Two decades later, we’re trusted by organizations of all sizes, including some of the world’s most revered brands and over 85% of the Fortune 500, to orchestrate their most critical initiatives. Whether it's launching rockets, propelling Formula 1 teams to victory, or providing life-changing surgeries, Smartsheet is at the heart of enterprise-wide achievement.

Building a Vibrant Smartsheet Community

The Smartsheet Overachievers at ENGAGE 2024

Over the years, our customers, partners, and employees have built a vibrant and welcoming community that is truly the secret to our success. We're constantly collaborating with our customers through programs like our Advisory Councils, where industry leaders give us input on our roadmap and strategy, and the Smartsheet Overachievers program, which gives passionate users a platform to share their successes and provide feedback to our product teams on roadmaps and future innovation.

Nowhere is the power of this community more visible than at our annual customer conference, ENGAGE. It's a special, high-energy event for everyone, and it's the place where the Smartsheet community comes together to swap ideas, sharpen their skills, get certified on the latest training, and connect with other enthusiasts. The energy there is contagious. As Smartsheet customer Lauren Harvey, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, shared, "I was in awe from the moment I walked into the convention center; there was an amazing energy in every room I entered. I went back home afterwards, telling everyone it was the highlight of my career. I never felt so at home and in my element with a group of professionals."

This enthusiasm goes both ways. As Michael Bickers, professional services engineering, Smartsheet, said, “One of the things that is regularly noted about ENGAGE is the customer fandom for the product, but I've experienced that fandom extending to the company. I know people who joined Smartsheet because they were previously customers who were inspired by what the company does.”

For our employees, ENGAGE is an opportunity to connect directly with the people who use our product every day. Daniel Medved, product marketing, Smartsheet, recalls his first ENGAGE, saying, “That was when I first met a large group of our customers, and was able to hear, see, and feel their level of enthusiasm for our product. They weren't just happy with a software tool; they were huge fans, deeply engaged, and eager to dive deeper.”  

This spirit of partnership ensures we don't just build for our customers; we build with our customers, allowing us to innovate in a way that serves the people who rely on Smartsheet every day.

A Culture That Sparks Innovation

Throughout our journey, we’ve never been about one big idea that changes the world. Instead, we’ve been shaped by thousands of ideas—big and small—that have come from every corner of the organization.

“This culture is driven by a genuine passion for our work, unwavering dedication to our customers, and an inherent tenacity and competitive spirit that pushes us forward,” said Smartsheet Chief People Officer Jo Deal. “Looking ahead, we’re focused on upskilling our teams to leverage AI to continue sparking new ideas and new ways of working—for themselves and for our customers.” 

We want all our employees to feel empowered to bring their ideas to life. One way we encourage this is through our annual internal hackathon, Hack the Sheet. Over the years, we’ve seen countless ideas emerge from Hack the Sheet that have turned into real product innovations. A recent example is our analyze data AI feature, which gives customers instant insights into their business and answers ad hoc questions with AI-generated charts and metrics.

Hack the Sheet’s theme is always a pun, and the 2025 theme was “Hack Wars”

We encourage bold thinking across every level of the organization, because we know that breakthrough ideas can come from anywhere. Whether it's a support team member who deeply understands customer needs, or an engineer prototyping new solutions, innovation at Smartsheet is a shared pursuit. For Courtney Lake, technical trainer, Smartsheet, that collaborative spirit is what makes the difference: “People at Smartsheet listen to ideas and are willing to try new things. My suggestions are taken seriously, I’m given a chance to try to implement my ideas, and my solutions are readily adopted. It was so refreshing not to have to fight to get people to give these concepts a chance, and even if they don’t work, it doesn’t rule out future ideas.” 

This willingness to listen and collaborate is a core part of our identity. It allows us to grow and innovate with our customers. At the heart of this is a deep sense of curiosity—a drive to explore new possibilities and continuously learn. It’s this mindset that fuels our innovation and keeps us moving forward.

Pioneering the Future of Intelligent Work with AI

We’re building a unified AI system where people and agents work together to orchestrate enterprise-wide achievement

The next era of Smartsheet is here. It’s called Intelligent Work Management and is being defined by AI-powered work. Just as we focused on making technology accessible to everyone 20 years ago, our goal today is to speed up our customers' time to success.  

Our vision for AI is centered on AI as a companion—not a replacement. We’re building a unified AI system powered by flexible data models, large language models, and intelligent agents. These agents will work alongside people to extend capacity, expedite decision-making, and optimize resources—while keeping governance and control firmly in human hands. Whether it’s generating reports, flagging risks, or recommending next steps, Smartsheet AI will amplify human impact.

And with every interaction, Smartsheet AI will get smarter. By connecting decisions, outcomes, and patterns across business processes with a flexible, graph-based data model, our platform will create organizational intelligence. This will drive the velocity of intelligent work—helping organizations move from decision to impact faster, and with greater confidence.

Our two decades of experience give us an incumbency advantage. With an extensive customer base and proven enterprise-grade foundations, we are uniquely positioned to succeed in the AI era. Our platform is built for security, scale, and versatility, enabling us to deliver powerful, AI-driven solutions that seamlessly integrate with our customers’ existing workflows and data.

Above all, we will continue to champion curiosity—the human differentiator that technology can never replace. Keeping our customers and our teams curious, engaged, and empowered is our path to continued category leadership.

Over the past two decades, we’ve seen what’s possible when we bring our best ideas forward. The next era of Smartsheet will be defined by how effectively we help people leverage technology to drive real, measurable, meaningful impact.

We are excited to build the next chapter with you.

Join the Celebration

Visit the Smartsheet Community for a celebration featuring trivia, a special 20-year anniversary swag giveaway, and more. Come join the fun and connect with fellow Smartsheet users!