Owler is an American Internet company headquartered in

San Mateo, California San Mateo ( ) is the most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, on the San Francisco Peninsula. It is part of the San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan region, and is located about south of San Francisco. San Mateo border ...

. It

crowdsources Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...

competitive insights by providing news alerts, company profiles, and polls and allows members to follow, track, and research companies in real time. The company was founded in 2011 and has over 3.5 million active users. In June 2021, Owler agreed to be acquired by

Meltwater Meltwater (or melt water) is water released by the melting of snow or ice, including glaciers, glacial ice, tabular icebergs and ice shelf, ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often found during early spring (season), spring when snow packs a ...

History

InfoArmy was founded in 2011 by Jim Fowler, Rajan Madhavan, and Tim Harsch. Fowler previously founded Jigsaw (later called Data.com), another crowdsourcing

Data as a Service Data as a service (DaaS) is a cloud-based software tool used for working with data, such as managing data in a data warehouse or analyzing data with business intelligence. It is enabled by software as a service (SaaS). Like all "as a service" (aa ...

platform that was sold for 175M to

Salesforce Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, and ap ...

in 2010. InfoArmy launched publicly in June 2012, and had 28 employees as of October 23, 2012. InfoArmy began as a crowdsourcing model where two-person research teams would compile one report on each company. Most researchers were stay-at-home parents, freelance workers, and international BPO workers. Access to InfoArmy's reports cost $99 for a year-long subscription and three quarterly reports. In January 2013, InfoArmy announced that its business model would not be sustainable in the long term. On February 1, 2013, InfoArmy relaunched as Owler, Inc. using a different business model. Owler offers a free mobile and online platform for company information and interactive business news. Members can choose to "follow" a set of companies, and Owler provides a personalized

newsfeed In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, content aggregator, feed reader, news reader, or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates digital content such as online newspapers, blogs, po ...

and daily email summary of the latest news on those companies. Owler members can also sign up to receive immediate notifications when major business events (such as

funding Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm use ...

acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

, or leadership changes) occur. The

competitive intelligence Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process and forward-looking practices used in producing knowledge about the competitive environment to improve organizational performance. Competitive intelligence involves systematically collecting and anal ...

featured on Owler comes from two primary places: it is both hand-curated by Owler employees from sources across the web, and crowdsourced from Owler users. Unlike other

business information Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, ...

services, Owler polls its members to gauge market sentiment and current trends. On June 18, 2021, Owler entered into an agreement to be acquired by

software as a service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike o ...

company, Meltwater, for $18.9 million in cash and $5.6 million in Meltwater equity.

Funding

Owler is backed by

Norwest Venture Partners Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, ...

and Trinity Ventures, two venture capital firms based in

Silicon Valley, California Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

. On Oct. 23, 2012, the company raised $17.3 million in Series B venture capital, bringing its funding to $19.3 million. Owler has raised a total of $30.8 millionin funding over four rounds. As part of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, the company received between $350,000 and $1 million in federally backed small business loan from

Silicon Valley Bank Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is a commercial bank division of First Citizens BancShares. The bank was previously the primary subsidiary of SVB Financial Group, a Public company, publicly traded bank holding company that had offices in 15 U.S. state ...

as part of the

Paycheck Protection Program The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a $953-billion business loan program established by the United States federal government during the First presidency of Donald Trump, Trump administration in 2020 through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and ...

. The company stated it would allow them to retain zero jobs.

Products and technology

Owler offers a number of different services, including two email products as well as a browser-based web platform.

Web platform

Members can view their personalized newsfeed on the browser-based platform, which can be accessed via computer or smartphone. They can also view company profiles, edit profile information, and take polls through the web platform. The web version also gives members access to lists that contain data about major events, such as funding rounds or acquisitions.

Daily Snapshot

Owler's Daily Snapshot provides users with the latest news events in their industry. Owler curates the most relevant news and blog posts from within the last 24 hours, surfacing stories on that member's company, competitors, and prospects. Each Daily Snapshot is personalized to a user's Competitive Graph and based on the companies that user follows.

Instant Insights

Owler emails users an Instant Insight anytime one of fifteen trigger events occur, including funding, acquisition, or leadership change. Users follow competitors, customers, prospects, and vendors, and Owler instantly sends full report hot anytime breaking events occur. This email features: company description, competitive landscape, and what people are saying.

Competitive Graph

Owler's Competitive Graph maps the relationship between companies. It was created by Owler's 3.5+ million members who regularly update their competitors (as well as provide estimates on critical data fields like revenue/employee numbers, CEO ratings, etc.). The Competitive Graph maps how closely companies compete with one another, allowing Owler to rank competitors. The Competitive Graph powers all of Owler's products, allowing the company to provide highly personalized email alerts and feeds.

Leadership

Leadership team

* Tim Harsch, CEO and co-founder * James F. Fowler, founder and executive chairman * Stephanie Vinella, CFO * Dhruv Gupta, Director of Product * John Duffy, Director of Engineering * Derrick Jenkins, Director of Marketing

Board of directors

* James F. Fowler, founder and chairman of the board * Tim Harsch, founder and CEO * Jeff Crowe (

) * Patrick Spain (

Newser Newser is an American news aggregation website. It was founded in 2007 by journalist/media pundit Michael Wolff and businessman Patrick Spain, the former CEO of HighBeam Research and Hoover's. Newser's president and editor-in-chief is Kate Sea ...

First Stop Health First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

)

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.owler.com
Owler Blog

Owler- Bloomberg
2021 mergers and acquisitions Crowdsourcing Social information processing Startup databases