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Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

Momentive

Momentive, The company that was earlier known for its popular product SurveyMonkey.

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Though the word of mouth has been the most effective way of marketing, people before the internet did not have any reliable source to actually get through those experiences based reviews on things, rather going through TV ads or Newspapers. After the internet came into being and computers reached every household, people came with the idea to build websites and software that can help people get through authentic reviews on things and such that those people could make up their mind on what they should buy or leave. Momentive Inc. is a company that works on a similar idea and develops cloud-based experience management software for companies so that these companies can offer their clients genuine reviews on things like market insight, brand insight, company atmosphere for aspirants, and customer experience, etc.

About Momentiv Inc.

Momentive is a 22 years old software development company founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley and Chris Finley. It is a publically traded company that develops software for experience management. The company trades on Nasdaq as MNTV, whereas the headquarters of the company is based in San Mateo, CA, United States. The company has its regional offices set up in locations like San Mateo, Portland, Seattle, Dublin, Ottawa, London, Sydney, etc, and serves its customers worldwide. Momentive provides cloud-based experience management and survey software services, Momentive, GetFeedback, and SurveyMonkey being the most popular products by the company. As of 2020, 1,220 people are employed at various Momentive offices, and it made annual revenues worth US$233.5 million in the same year, with 25,000,000 registered to its services.

Momentive
Image source: prnewswire.com

Founding Story of Momentive

Ryan Finley and Chris Finley founded Momentive Inc. as SurveyMonkey in 1999. The company was one of its kind and launched its first product, a consumer-oriented survey platform. Due to the unique idea of the company, it became successful from day one. The service it provided was free, and many of its services remain free till today.
In the year 2009, Dave Goldberg joined SurveyMonkey as the CEO, who helped the company grow really fast. The same year, Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital took over some of the majority shares in SurveyMonkey. In 2013, the company raised $800 million in debt, and the company became a unicorn with a valuation worth $1.35 billion. The next year, MonekySurvey received $250 million from companies like Google Capital and Morgan Stanley, etc.
In August 2014, SurveyMonkey acquired Fluidware, a competitor survey company based in Canada. This purchase was followed by the acquisitions of TechValidate in 2015, Usabilla, and GetFeedback in 2019. The company also acquired some survey tools, including Precision Polling, Wufoo, and Zoomerang, etc., for the purpose of adding some more features to its existing platforms and other products to its product line.
In June 2021, SurveyMonkey changed its name to Momentive. The news of the acquisition of Momentive by Zendesk Inc. also came in October month of the same year. Though the merger is still to happen, the amount is already decided, and that is nearly $4 billion.

The CEO at Momentive

SurveyMonkey, aka Momentive, had seen the most growth in the leadership of Dave Goldberg as the CEO. But after his death in 2015, Zander Lurie was named the CEO of the company. Lurie is a native American who is also known as one of the leading business executives as well as a board member of GoPro. He has a graduate degree from the University of Washington and an MBA from Emory University. Lurie has worked at companies like GoPro as the Senior Vice President and CBS Interactive as the CFO. He also co-founded CoachArt in 2001. In 2015, he became the chairman of the board of SurveyMonkey 2015, and in 2016, he was named the CEO of the company.

Altium

Altium, 35 years old PC-based electronics design software development company.

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Integrated Circuits are the biggest discovery in the field of IT and electronics. This little device has helped the IT industry to grow rapidly and computers reach every home as PCs. These circuits are small in size, but there is a lot of work done over it. These are built on printed circuit boards with thousands of lines of code written on them. So building an IC is a huge task, which includes multiple phases. Many software companies write codes for ICs and without these companies, it will be really difficult to make a single IC chip. Altium is one of those software companies that build software for companies that make printed circuit boards. The company is one of the leading software development companies, serving companies based in different parts of the world, including the US, Australia, China, Japan, etc.

About Altium

Altium is a more than 35 years old PC-based electronics design software development company. Nick Martin founded Altium in 1985, and today, the company is known as one of the leading EDA/FPGA software development companies. It is an Australian company with its regional headquarters based in countries like the United States, Australia, China, Japan, and some countries of Europe. The company develops software products for industries that build EDA, Printed circuit boards, FPGA, Embedded Systems, Electronics Design, etc., including telecommunication, automation, aerospace, and defense, etc. Altium Designer is the most popular product by Altium. Apart from that, the company is known for its products like Altium Concord Pro, Altium NEXUS, Vault, CircuitStudio, CircuitMaker, TASKING, Octopart, Ciiva, Upverter, etc.

Altium
Image source: www.altium.com

Founding Altium

Nicholas Martin founded Altium as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in 1985, while he was already working at the University of Tasmania as an electronics designer. The idea of his company came to him when he was working at the company and thought of making more affordable electronic products for people. He merged the electronics design into PC platforms and launched the first DOS-based printed circuit board layout and design tool in 1985. The next year, Protel Systems partnered with HST Technology Pty Ltd. and started its international journey, too. The same year, the company partnered with ACCEL Technologies, Inc. to provide customer support to clients based in the US, Canada, and Mexico. The company brought new software in the following years, including Protel Schematic for DOS, Autotrax, and Easytrax, etc.

At the beginning of the next decade, Compay started to develop FPGA, PCB, and embedded software under its single data model project. In 1991, the company came with the first Windows-based PCB design system for Windows, named Advanced Schematic/PCB 1.0. In 1999, Altium went public on the Australian Securities Exchange. The company changed its name from Protel Systems to Compay in 2001 and made some important acquisitions like Tasking (2001), Hoschar AG (2002), Morfik Technology Pty Ltd. (2010), Octopart (2015), Ciiva (2015), Perception Software (2016), Upverter (2017), etc.
In the past few years, the company has expanded to Asia, Europe, Canada, and the US. As of 2019, the company made annual revenue worth US$171.8 million. The company is currently serving industries including automotive, aerospace, defence, and telecommunications, etc.

The CEO at Altium

Aram Mirkazemi is the CEO of Altium. He is a native of Iran and had come to Australia as a Refugee in the 80s. Though he wasn’t good at English at that time, it was Maths in which he excelled and got admission to the University of Tasmania. In the later years, Mirkazemi found his interest in computers and artificial intelligence as well. While he was still studying at the university, he received an offer from Nick Martin to join Altium (then Protel). For the past 30 plus years, he has served Altium in various positions, including the company’s CTO, senior executive VP of engineering, etc. In 2014, Mirkazemi became the CEO of Altium. He also founded Morfik, a software company that Altium acquired in 2010.

Instructure

Instructure, Best known as the publisher of Canvas providing a web-based educational solution.

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We must admit that the past two years have been the toughest for the education sector. Schools and colleges being closed have raised many questions about the future of the young generation. Every government has tried to keep up with the education for schools and higher education institutions, but the best solutions came from the private sector in the form of educational software (LMS) and online websites. Companies that have been promoting online education through LMSs have come to the rescue and have helped the students to stay updated with their educational needs. Not only for the schools and other educational institutes but for the small to big companies, these LMSs have been like a boon. One of such LMS development companies includes Instructure.
Best known as the publisher of Canvas, Instructure is a thirteen years old American educational technology company. The company provides a web-based educational solution for K-12 students to students pursuing higher education as well as for corporate training.

About the Company

Instructure is an Educational Technology and Learning Management Systems provider from the US. The company headquarters is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, US, and it operates from seven different locations in the US, serving its clients from all over the world. As per the 2019 records, over 1200 people are working for Instructure, and the company made annual revenues worth $209.5 million in 2018. The Instructure educational products include Canvas, Catalog, Studio, Portfolium, MasteryConnect, Videri, CASE Benchmarks, and Item Bank, Navigate Item Bank, Academic Benchmarks, Certify, DataConnect, Program Assessment, Pathways, Canvas for Corporate Education, etc. Among all the products by Instructure, Canvas is the most popular product of the company.

Instructure
Image source: philonedtech.com

The Back Story

Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley founded Instructure in 2008 when they were still at college. They were graduate students at BYU. The idea of Instructure came from the bad experience that the two co-founders had with the existing LMSs. They thought the existing ones were outdated, and no LMS developer companies were planning to upgrade them. Thus the two developed a new LMS under their newly built company, Instructure.
Josh Coates, the founder of Mozy, was the first investor the company got. He also became the first CEO of Instructure for the years 2010-2018. Instructure bagged its first big contract from Utah Education Network (UEN) in 2010, replacing Blackboard (one of the most preferred LMS of that time) in almost every college and university in the Utah area.
In 2011, the company launched officially Canvas LMS and made it available as open-source software for free. The software was also launched for iOS and Android devices. By 2013, the company reached almost 300 schools and colleges and built a customer base of 9 million users. The same year, Instructure held a Series D Funding raising $30 Million.
In 2015, Instructure came with its corporate LMS named Bridge and held a Series E funding raising $40 million. The company went public in November of the same year and started trading on New York Stock Exchange. The next year, the company was ranked number 4 on its Best Places to Work list by Glassdoor, whereas in 2018, it was ranked number 6 in the “Top Work Places” for large businesses list by Salt Lake Tribune. In March 2020, Thoma Bravo acquired Instructure for a sum of $2 billion. Thoma Bravo operates as its parent company, whereas Instructure operates as an independent company.

The Founders

Steve Daly is the current CEO of Instructure. He has a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University (BYU). Daly has also got an MBA in Strategy and Finance from the same university. He started his career as a Mechanical Designer at Glumac and Associates. Later Daly became the Director of Marketing at Intel and stayed at the company for ten years. After leaving Intel in 2002, he joined Soronti in 2003 as the CEO but then switched to Avocent Corporation to become the Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy in 2003. He has also worked as the chairman and CEO of Ivanti for ten years. In July 2002, Daly joined Instructure as its CEO.

blackbaud

Anthony Bakker, From banker to establish a software company that works for social good organizations.

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There are an infinite number of software development companies all over the world, but how many are there that are working dedicatedly for social good organizations. Blackbaud is one such company that develops software only to serve the social good communities, like nonprofits, healthcare organizations, fundraisers, etc. The company promotes the idea of strengthening the social economy, and for that, it develops software that would be useful for communities that work for social welfare.

Blackbaud has been there for almost 40 years and has gone through a great growth transition. It started from building a small billing system for a school, and today it is producing similar but advanced cloud-based software. The company products include software for analytics, financial management, fundraising and relationship management, grant and award management, marketing and engagement, organizational and program management, payment services, and social responsibility, etc. Blackbaud also promotes philanthropy by encouraging its employees to join and volunteer in community services. It specifically offers paid vacations to its employees, so that they can volunteer with full heart in such services.

About Blackbaud

Blackbaud is a cloud computing provider and software publishing company founded in 1983, in New York. The company headquarters is based in South Carolina, United States, whereas it serves in about 60 countries, including England, Australia, and Canada, etc. Blackbaud is mainly known for its flagship software named Raiser’s Edge. It is a fundraising SQL database software used by many companies globally. Apart from that, the company builds software like Customer Relationship Management software, Marketing Campaign software, Fundraising as well as Finance and Accounting software, helping communities working for social good. Anthony Bakker is the founder of Blackbaud and Michael Gianoni is the current CEO of the company.

blackbaud
Image source: www.bleepstatic.com

Founding Blackbaud

Anthony Bakker, the founder of Blackbaud, before founding the company worked as a banker. He first developed a billing system for a school, based in Manhattan, New York, in 1981. By 1982, the software became quite popular among a few other clients. This led Bakker to leave his job and start Blackbaud Microsystems in 1983. As a company, Blackbaud launched a student billing system as its first product. The famous Raiser’s Edge is the advanced version of the same student billing system by Blackbaud.

In the year 1989, Blackbaud shifted its headquarters from New York to South Carolina. The company then released its software for Windows 95 in 1995, raising the number of clients for it. The company also made some important acquisitions during the same time, including ACOMS, Master Systems Inc. as well as Master Software.

Blackbaud had its first IPO in 2004. It trades on Nasdaq with the symbol BLKB. Some more acquisitions took place in the further years, Campagne Associates (2006), eTapestry (2007), Target Analysis Group (2007), Target Software (2007), and Kintera (2008) being the most important ones among them. In the next decade, Blackbaud acquired names like Convio (2012), MicroEdge (2014), JustGiving (2017), Reeher (2018), YourCause (2019), etc. Blackbaud has been Forbes Most Innovative Growth Company multiple times.

The CEO at Blackbaud

Michael Gianoni is the current President and the CEO at Blackbaud. He grew an interest in engineering when he was in high school and attended a one-day engineering class. After graduating from high school, he opted for Electrical Engineering from Waterbury State Technical College in 1979. He then joined Charter Oak College to study business and received a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of New Haven in 1992. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from the University of Haven in 2014.

Gianoni has worked in some big-name companies in prominent positions. He was the Senior Vice President of DST. He also served Fiserv for seven years as the President and the Group President. Gianoni joined Teradata as the Chair of the Board of Directors in 2015 and still continues to serve in the same position. In January 2014, Gianoni joined Blackbaud as the CEO.

Qualys

Qualys, Company offering cloud security services to companies for many years.

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With the rise of personal computers, and then of the internet, there has also originated the need for security for the data and the stuff one puts on the web. Though there are many companies out there, providing antivirus and anti-data-theft services and applications, some companies are there from the very start. These companies were the first ones to bring new products to fight malware and provide protection from any external threat to data online and offline. Qualys is one such company that has been delivering vulnerability management solutions to the IT industry from the very start. Starting from building applications, today, Qualys Inc. is offering cloud security through its web applications using the SaaS model.

About the Company

Qualys is a more than twenty years old company, founded in 1999. Philippe Langlois and Gilles Samoun are the founders of the company, whereas Sumedh Thakar is the current President and CEO of Qualys. The company trades publically at Nasdaq with ticker QLYS. Qualys is known for its cloud security services, including Certificate Inventory, Certificate Assessment, Vulnerability Management, Threat Protection, Web Application Scanning, Web Application Firewall, and Security Configuration Assessment, etc. The company headquarters is based in Foster City, California, the U.S., and around 2000 people work for it. As of 2020, the company made annual revenues worth $363 million. Big names like BT, IBM, Verizon, NTT, Wipro, etc. are some of the permanent clients of Qualys.

Qualys
Image source: www.itsecurityguru.org

Founding Qualys

Philippe Langlois and Gilles Samoun founded Qualys in 1999. Philippe Courtot was the angel investor in the company who also became the first CEO of Qualys. In 2000, the company brought its first product, QualysGuard to the market, which was also the first type of vulnerability management application. The idea behind the company was to build cloud-based products so to scan any network globally. Based on the same idea, in 2002, Qualys launched QualysGuard Intranet Scanner, an application that could scan an entire LAN. In the next few years, the company launched products like FreeMap (2003), QualysGuard product line (2005), QualysGuard Policy Compliance (2008), and QualysGuard Malware Detection Service (2010).
With the launch of new and innovative products, Qualys managed to get ranked among 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the USA in 2010 in the first decade of its launch. It was also named one of the largest private companies in Silicon Valley in 2012. Later in September 2012, Qualys went public on NASDAQ and raised $87.5 million in its first IPO. In 2014, Qualys won the “Best Security Company” by SC Magazine. The next year, the company launched Cloud Agent Platform as well as a free asset management service named Qualys AssetView. In the following year, the company came with ThreatPROTECT, a cloud-based platform for vulnerability detection. The same year, it partnered with Microsoft Azure Security Center to integrate its services to the latter.
The company also made some major acquisitions like the network analysis assets from Nevis Networks (2017), NetWatcher (2017), 1Mobility (2018), Asset Inventory (2018), etc. The company won the Global Vulnerability Management Market Leadership Award (2017), Cyber Security Leader (2017), Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Award for Vulnerability Assessment (2019), and Best Vulnerability Management Solution (2020). Today, Qualys is operational in over 130 countries and serves over 10,300 customers globally.

The CEO at Qualys

Sumedh Thakar is the President and CEO of Qualys. He was born and brought up in India. Thakar has an engineering degree in Computer Science from Savitribai Phule Pune University. He started his engineering career at Patni Computers as soon he graduated from college in 1997. In 2001, Thakar joined Intacct. Corp as a software engineer and then started working at Northwest Airlines. In 2003, Sumedh became the Vice President of engineering at Qualys, and then in 2014, was promoted as the Chief Product Officer of the company. In November 2019, he was appointed the full-time President and Chief Product Officer. he became the CEO of the company in February 2021.

Asana

Asana – The Makers Of Simplified Management Tools To Help Companies Focus On Their Goals.

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Small or big, goals are necessary for every type of growth, be it personal growth or growth as a big company. To achieve these goals, one needs to have a system or discipline that would help manage the tasks required to be fulfilled for those goals. The idea behind founding Asana has been the same. The company was founded to provide companies with software and web applications that would help them reduce the complexity of managing their teams, daily tasks, etc. so that they can achieve their targets (small or big) with lesser efforts and in time. The applications by Asana do not only help companies manage their teams and tasks, but also help the employees increase their productivity.

About Asana

Asana is a task management and productivity software development company founded in 2008. Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein founded the company to reduce the complexity of daily office work for the companies so that they can focus on the major part of the work. Asana is a Sanskrit word that means Yoga pose. The company headquarters is based in San Francisco, California, US and offers services to its clients globally. The software and applications by Asana include tasks like organizing and managing daily office work, managing the teams, and tracking the progress. Apart from web applications and software, Asana also provides API integration to third-party applications. Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Slack are some of those applications with Asana API integrations.
As of 2019, around 1000 people are working at Asana, and it made annual revenues worth $142.2 million in the same year. The company is publically traded, trading on New York Stock Exchange as ASAN.

Asana
Image source: thisweekinstartups.com

The Company History

Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein were working together at Facebook in its beginning years. The two worked on improving the productivity of the Facebook employees, as CTO and the engineer manager, respectively. In 2008, the two left their jobs at Facebook to establish Asana. The company launched the beta version of their software in 2011 and offered it for free to companies. Later in 2012, Asana released the software for commercial use. The software from Asana is to manage the collaboration of the employees and daily tasks. It is a software-as-a-service that provides multiple features helpful for companies to handle their projects and their teams.
In 2013, Asana launched another software named Organizations providing administration tools for companies. The next year, the company released Calendar View for iOS and the Android app for the same came in 2015, including team conversations feature. By the next year, Company had added more features to its software like team management, member management, status updates, task dependencies, custom fields, Boards, pre-made project templates, and security features, etc.
Asana partnered with Microsoft in 2017 and integrated its features into Microsoft Teams. The same year, Gmail also integrated some Asana features into it, resulting in the release of comment-only projects. Asana also released its versions in French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese in 2017 and 2018. CSV importer and Timeline came in 2018. In 2021, Asana launched a special app for Zoom as well as a new Enterprise Work Graph suite.
Though Asana is not a very old company, it has been successful in bagging contracts and partnerships from big names like Google, Slack, Wufoo, Okta, Uber, Zoom, IBM, eBay, and Microsoft, and over 100,000 other paying customers. The company has won a few recognitions, like “one of the best collaboration and productivity apps for teams” by PC Magazine in 2017 and “one of the Best Workplaces for Parents” by Great Place to Work in 2020.

The Founder/CEO

Dustin Aaron Moskovitz is one of the co-founders and the present CEO of Asana. He was born on 22 May 1984 in Gainesville, Florida, U.S. Moskovitz went to the Vanguard High School and joined Harvard University to pursue a graduate degree with an economics major. He was one of the four roommates with Mark Zuckerberg at the university. So when Zuckerberg decided to drop from college to work on a Facebook full time, Moskovitz too joined in and moved to Palo Alto with him. Moskovitz was the first CTO at Facebook and spent four years at the company. In 2008, he, along with Justin Rosenstein, left Facebook and started Asana. Moskovitz became the first CEO of Asana and is still serving the company as the CEO.