D&B Hoovers was founded by Gary Hoover and

Patrick Spain Patrick J. Spain (born 1952) is a serial entrepreneur. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of First Stop Health, LLC., a Chicago-based provider of telemedicine services. He is also the Executive Chairman and co-founder of the news curation sit ...

in 1990 as an American business research company that provided information on

companies A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether natural, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specifi ...

and industries through their primary product platform named "Hoover's". In 2003, it was acquired by

Dun & Bradstreet The Dun & Bradstreet Holdings, Inc. (D&B) is an American company that provides commercial data, analytics, and insights for businesses. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, the company offers a wide range of products and services for risk a ...

and operated for a time as a wholly owned subsidiary. In 2017, the Hoover's product was re-branded D&B Hoovers.

is headquartered in

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...

, US.

History

Hoovers was started in 1990 by Gary Hoover, Patrick J. Spain, Alan Chai, and Alta Campbell. Leading up to this, Hoover had founded the Bookstop book store chain, ultimately purchased by

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States. Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...

. Hoover's initially was called The Reference Press, as it published reference books about companies. The company grew rapidly under a business team led by Spain. This team included Carl Shepherd, Lynn Atchison,

Elisabeth DeMarse Elisabeth DeMarse is an American businesswoman and the former Chairwoman, CEO, and President of TheStreet.com. As of 2022, she is a board member of the NYC-based ad-fraud prevention and marketing company Kubient Inc. Early life and education D ...

, Jani Spede, Kris Rao, and Gordon Anderson, among others. Spain was CEO from 1993 to 2001, and chairman from 1994 to 2002. Hoovers made an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

exchange in 1999. The company then became a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet, which bought Hoover's for $119 million in 2003. After the acquisition of Avention by Dun & Bradstreet in 2017, the D&B Hoovers solution was launched, and replaced the existing Hoovers' product.

Operations

Dun & Bradstreet maintains a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

of more than 330 million companies with 30,000 global data sources updated 5 million times per day. It combines Dun & Bradstreet's data with Avention's sales acceleration platform. Subscriptions are sold primarily to sales, marketing, and business development professionals seeking contact information for prospective customers.See, e.g., Hoover's SEC filing 10-K, 31 March 2002 The database is used for lead generation, outreach, prepping for sales calls, researching companies, being alerted to changes in leadership, and acquiring new customers. Besides publishing information through the D&B Hoovers product, information is also distributed via data feeds and third-party licensing agreements. D&B Hoovers claims to offer proprietary business information through an online platform and integrated workflow solutions, houses data on more than 120 million business records across 1,000 industries.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:DandB Hoovers 1999 initial public offerings 2003 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1990 Business services companies established in 1990 Companies based in Austin, Texas Dun & Bradstreet Online databases Software companies established in 1990