This is the first in a series about European companies that - often quietly - built successful businesses in the US.
I scraped, enriched, and cross-referenced thousands of LinkedIn profiles to answer one question: which European companies under 1,000 employees are actually succeeding in the U.S.?
Not the ones that claim traction in press releases. The ones paying senior sales people in America — because you don't do that unless it's working.
Out of roughly 3,000 companies that met my criteria, only two were from Slovakia. One of them was 2Ring.
I'd never heard of them. And that's exactly the point.
Meet EU2US Champion numero uno.
The Company at a Glance
Company | 2Ring |
|---|---|
HQ / Country of Origin | Bratislava, Slovakia 🇸🇰 |
Founded | 2003 |
Category | CCaaS / Contact center analytics |
Year Entered U.S. | 2011 |
Funding at Expansion | Hybrid (Part of a group) |
Expansion Strategy | Partner Only (No direct sales) |
US Team Size | 7 employees (5 in GTM roles) |
Status (2026) | Independent (OG Team) & Profitable |
This their product - an add-on super-powering call center systems born within Cisco ecosystem.
From Bratislava to Cisco's Price List
Michal Grebac has been at 2Ring (clever name for a call center software, isn’t it?) for nearly 20 years.
He started as a product manager in Bratislava, and now runs sales and marketing from Sacramento. When I asked him how the company started, the answer was disarmingly simple.
2Ring built add-on software for Cisco call centers. Cisco sold the infrastructure — the "iPhone," as Michal puts it — and 2Ring built the apps that supercharge its functionality. Agent desktops. Real-time dashboards. CRM integrations. The tools that let supervisors see what was happening and let agents do their jobs without toggling between six screens.
The pitch was easy: you just purchased Cisco's contact center platform. For roughly 10-20% more, 2Ring supercharges its capabilities.
But here's what made it interesting. 2Ring didn't start by chasing American customers.
They started by growing up inside a local ecosystem — and then riding it across the Atlantic.
20-odd years of step-by-step compounding growth aka another “overnight success” built over decades of consistent dedication.
The Launchpad: Soitron Spin-Off
2Ring wasn't born in a garage.
It was born inside Soitron, a Slovak IT services company that happened to also be a Cisco reseller. Soitron built and sold IT solutions — and in the process, its developers created a repeatable software product for Cisco call centers.
That product eventually became 2Ring.
It was a natural split: a services company developing a product that could stand on its own. Soitron had the infrastructure, the lab, the customer relationships, and the technical know-how around Cisco call centers. 2Ring was born as a product that could travel beyond any single services engagement.
But there was a catch.
Soitron's primary business was as a Cisco reseller, and the local market had plenty of other resellers competing for the same customers. Michal describes the early market as "the Wild West." 2Ring had to operate under its own brand, distinct from Soitron, so it could sell to other resellers' customers without triggering channel conflict.
The Customer Champion: Zuno Bank Success Story
2Ring already had customers and live deployments. What they didn't have was a reference that could open doors outside Central Europe.
Zuno by Raiffeisen group became a major home market reference case AND champion - having enough scale to carry plenty of weight abroad as well. Source: Testimonial video sponsored by Cisco.
That changed with Zuno Bank, a digital banking subsidiary of Raiffeisen. Zuno was the kind of client most companies dream about: everything was in English, the team was forward-thinking, and they genuinely wanted to co-develop the product.
2Ring built the agent desktop for Zuno's call center on top of Cisco Finesse. The project went well enough that Cisco funded a professional video case study — a polished production showing a real European bank running 2Ring's software in production.
That video became 2Ring's calling card. Thirteen years later, it's still on YouTube — published July 2012, right as 2Ring was preparing to enter the U.S. market.
Michal presented the case study alongside the Zuno’s Head of Contact Center Peter Magyar at Cisco Live in London. From there, Cisco partners across Europe started paying attention.
The Ecosystem: Getting on the Cisco Price List
The real inflection point wasn't a single deal. It was getting onto Cisco's global price list.
Before that, any Cisco reseller could technically buy 2Ring's software, but it required a separate procurement process. Getting on the price list meant that the thousands of Cisco partners worldwide could add 2Ring to a Cisco order with a single line item.
Same purchase order. Same approval process. Zero friction.
2Ring only sold indirectly through channel partners - yet the initial years required plenty of customer education by 2Ring US team before the partners were able to drive sales on their own.
2Ring was the first Central / Eastern European company to achieve this.
But it didn't happen by waiting for Cisco's blessing. Michal and the team spent their first years in the U.S. literally driving from partner to partner across the entire continental US, demoing a new Cisco product called Finesse that many partners hadn't even seen yet. He'd show them the empty Finesse interface, then show them what it looked like with 2Ring installed.
"We evangelized for a long time before it paid off," he says. "Partners would see the demo, say 'interesting, we'll see,' and then months later when they were migrating a customer to Finesse, they'd remember there was this 2Ring thing."
In the mid-2000s, Cisco had roughly 70% of the global contact center market. And about 70% of that was in the United States. Simple math: if you built on Cisco and wanted to grow, you went where the customers were.
2Ring's first attempt at U.S. presence was through an outsourced sales arrangement — dedicated reps in North America working on their behalf. It gave them a footprint, but traction was slow. The real shift came when two things coincided.
First, Michal moved to the United States in 2012. Once he was on the ground, things started clicking.
Second, the Cisco-funded Zuno case study video had just been published that same summer — giving 2Ring a credibility asset that could travel ahead of them into every partner conversation.
“Get your legal framework right, invest in ISO and SOC 2 certifications early, and make sure someone is physically present in the market.”
The Channel-Only Model
Today, 2Ring sells entirely through partners. Cisco resellers, Five9, Genesys — all major contact center platforms now carry 2Ring on their price lists. The company runs no Google Ads, no outbound campaigns. Revenue comes from partner referrals and presence at industry events like Cisco Live.
What do partners actually do for the cut from the revenue? "They have the customer relationship and they identified the need" Michal explains. It's a simple value exchange: 2Ring builds and supports the product, partners handle distribution and customer access.
2Ring's American team is just a handful of people dispersed across states — Sacramento, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Texas, New Hampshire. There's no large U.S. office. There doesn't need to be.
Connecting the Dots
I went into this conversation expecting a standard expansion story. What I found was a 20-year case study in ecosystem leverage.
Trifecta of 2Ring’s success: Soitron as their launchpad, Zuno as their customer champion and Cisco as a massive & supportive ecosystem to grow within.
2Ring never raised venture capital. They never hired a big U.S. sales team. They never ran a PR campaign. They had three enablers — each building on the last:
The launchpad. 2Ring was born inside Soitron — a services company with Cisco customers, infrastructure, and deep technical know-how. They didn't need outside capital or cold outreach. They had a home where they could learn the domain, access real enterprise accounts, and build a product that worked before ever going independent.
The customer champion. Zuno Bank — backed by Raiffeisen — gave 2Ring a credibility asset that punched far above their weight. A real bank, in production, with a Cisco-funded case study. That reference opened the door to the U.S. market before 2Ring ever set foot there.
The ecosystem. Cisco's dominance — 70% of the global contact center market — became 2Ring's distribution engine. Getting on Cisco's price list meant thousands of partners could sell 2Ring without any extra effort. The product traveled through someone else's sales force, across someone else's customer base, into someone else's deals. And once the opportunity opened up (call center move from on-prem to cloud during the pandemic) - grow out from to other similar ecosystems.
No longer Cisco only. Pandemic demand for in-the-cloud dashboard solution fueled their expansion to other ecosystems - here at Five9 industry event.
Launchpad. Customer Champion. Ecosystem. And Beyond. Each one made the next possible.
And there's a lesson in what made the champion work. A great reference case isn't a logo on your website. The customer is part of a big, recognizable name. They're willing to go far beyond a testimonial quote — they'll stand on stage with you, co-present at industry events, promote the partnership publicly.
***
I'm Katka Sabo, founder of Sabotage Works.
I help European B2B tech & innovative scale-ups build their on-the-ground go-to-market in the US.
If you're a European company that's quietly winning in America and want to be featured in this series - or if you're trying to figure out how to get there - reach out.
