Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is con ...

. Optimizely provides

A/B testing A/B testing (also known as bucket testing, split-run testing, or split testing) is a user experience research methodology. A/B tests consist of a randomized experiment that usually involves two variants (A and B), although the concept can be al ...

and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and

feature toggle A feature toggle in software development provides an alternative to maintaining multiple feature branches in source code. A condition within the code enables or disables a feature during runtime. In agile settings the toggle is used in product ...

capabilities, as well as

web content management A web content management system (WCM or WCMS) is a software content management system (CMS) specifically for web content. It provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools that help users with little knowledge of web programm ...

and

digital commerce The digital economy is a portmanteau of digital computing and economy, and is an umbrella term that describes how traditional brick-and-mortar economic activities (production, distribution, trade) are being transformed by Internet, World Wide ...

. The company was acquired by

Episerver Episerver is a software company offering Web content management system, web content management (WCM) (or Content Management System, CMS), E-commerce, digital commerce, and digital marketing, through the Episerver Digital Experience Platform Cloud ...

in October 2020 and in January of 2021 Episerver announced that they were branding the combined company as "Optimizely".

History

Optimizely was founded in 2010 by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen, both formerly of

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. Optimizely completed the

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...

seed accelerator program in the winter of 2010. In November 2010, Optimizely closed a

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

1.2 million funding round from angel investors. The company became cash flow positive in 2011. In May 2012 Optimizely announced that it had raised new funding from

Battery Ventures Battery Ventures is an American technology-focused investment firm. Founded in 1983, the firm makes venture-capital and private-equity investments in markets across the globe from offices in Boston, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Israel and Lon ...

, GV, and InterWest Partners. In April 2013, Optimizely raised $28 million in

Series A round A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exch ...

funding. The round was led by

Benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Benchmark (surveying), a point of known elevati ...

, with participation from

Bain Capital Ventures Bain Capital Ventures LLC is the venture capital division within Bain Capital, which has approximately $160 billion of assets under management worldwide. The firm's early-stage investments have included Attentive, Bloomreach, Clari, Docusign, Fl ...

and Optimizely's existing investors Battery Ventures, InterWest Partners, and

Google Ventures GV is a venture capital investment arm of Alphabet Inc., founded by Bill Maris, that provides seed, venture, and growth stage funding to technology companies. Founded as Google Ventures in 2009, the firm has operated independently of Google, Alph ...

. Benchmark's Peter Fenton joined Optimizely's board of directors. In April 2013 Optimizely launched support for nine European languages. On April 17, 2014, Optimizely held its first ''Opticon'' user conference, where it announced the launch of its new mobile app A/B testing software. In May 2014, Optimizely raised $57 million in Series B funding. The round was led by

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen H ...

with participation from Benchmark and

. As part of the round,

Scott Weiss Scott Weiss is an American venture capitalist at the Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, joining in April 2011 as the firm's fourth general partner. A native of Sarasota, Florida, he founded and was CEO of IronPort Systems, which Cisco acqu ...

general partner at Andreessen Horowitz joined Optimizely's board of directors. In October 2015, the company released its second product for mobile and website personalization. The same month, Optimizely raised $58 million in Series C funding, led by

Index Ventures Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/ AI, and security. Since its ...

, with participation from firms such as Andreessen Horowitz,

, Battery Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Citi Ventures, Danhua Capital,

Salesforce Ventures Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, ...

and

Tenaya Capital Tenaya Capital is a venture capital firm with offices in Portola Valley, California, and Wellesley, Massachusetts. Founded in 1995 as Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Tenaya spun out to become an independent firm in 2009 following Lehman's bankr ...

. As part of the round, Ilya Fushman of Index joined Optimizely's board of directors. On March 10, 2016, Optimizely laid off 40 employees, 10% of the workforce. In September 2016, the company released ''Optimizely X'', with expanded solutions for web experimentation, personalization, recommendations, mobile, full stack, and OTT. In July 2017, Jay Larson replaced Dan Siroker as the company's CEO. Pete Koomen was the company's CTO in 2012. Co-founder Dan Joseph Siroker became the company's Executive Chairman in July 2017. In July 2020, the company laid off 15% of its staff due to the impact of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. On September 3, 2020,

announced that they were acquiring Optimizely, and the acquisition was completed on October, 21st 2020. On January 27, 2021, Episerver announced that they were rebranding the combined company as Optimizely. On March 22, 2021, Optimizely acquired Zaius, a Customer Data Platform. On December 6, 2021, Optimizely acquired Welcome, a marketing orchestration platform.

Software

Optimizely has 6+ product offerings, The Digital Experience Platform, Content Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Intelligence Cloud, Full Stack, and CDP as an addition to the original tools for web experimentation, personalization, recommendations, and feature flags. These products are delivered in a

(SaaS) model.

Awards and recognition

Optimizely was recognized as a Red Herring Top 100 North America 2013 Finalist. The same year, it was recognized as a Finalist for the Digital Analytics Association New Technology of the Year Awards for Excellence 2013 and The Forrester Wave Seven Most Significant Online Testing Platform Providers 2013. Optimizely CEO Dan Siroker was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2013. The company was listed on San Francisco Business Times Best Place To Work list in 2014 and 2015. Optimizely is a featured keynote on along side Retail expert Blake Van Leer at the 2023 LA eCommerce Summit.

References

External links

* {{official website, https://www.optimizely.com/ 2010 establishments in California Companies based in San Francisco Internet properties established in 2010 Multinational companies headquartered in the United States Online companies of the United States Privately held companies of the United States Web service providers Y Combinator companies Customer experience American companies established in 2010