ON24, Inc. is a San Francisco-based company that markets products and services based upon webcasting and virtual event and environment technology. ON24 is a privately held company whose primary venture capital investors are Goldman Sachs, Gold Hill Capital, U.S. Venture Partners, Canaan Partners and Rho Ventures.
History
The company was founded in 1998 under the name Newsource with an initial idea to become a distribution center for Internet-based video press releases. In 1999, the company changed its name to ON24 and changed its focus to being an online financialnews streaming media source. The company hired Mitch Ratcliffe to form a news team based in San Francisco. ON24 News became the first news operation to provide on-demand streaming audio and video news product made specifically for an Internet audience. The news team produced more than 79,000 audio and video news reports of between 1 minute and three hours in length. Viewers were able to subscribe to news based on the specific companies in which they invested or by industry sector. Each viewer's stream was customized based on their preferences, a mode of delivery that remains unique. At its height in 2000, the ON24 News staff numbered more than 100 with international reporters in cities such as New York, London and Tel Aviv. Its content was syndicated to various financial portals such as Merrill Lynch, E-Trade and the Nasdaqtrading floor. On August 1, 2002, ON24 shuttered its news operation, citing a lack of interest in Internet-based financial news in the wake of the dot-com bust. In 2003, ON24 introduced a web-based video publishing platform that enables users to self-produce live and on-demand webcasts. ON24 Webcast Center has been adopted across the publishing, medical education and enterprise sectors. ON24 enters 2006 with 20 consecutive quarters of revenue growth, a customer list featuring some of the world's largest companies, and the experience of producing more than 100,000 successful webcasts. The ON24 Webcast Center platform launched in 2002. In 2006 ON24 began its global expansion and now has local presence in the US, the UK, Australia, Singapore and Spain. With its current expansion in China and certified global partner network, ON24 provides local support in almost every country in the world. In 2008 ON24 launched its virtual event platform, ON24 Virtual Show. In 2009 ON24 was recognized with Frost & Sullivan’s virtual events market leadership award, and in 2010 ON24 received a second market share leadership award from Frost & Sullivan, for web events. 2010 saw the launch of ON24’s Virtual Briefing Center, a virtual environment platform used for a wide range of applications, such as training, marketing, product launches and corporate and HR communications; and ON24 Social Webcasting, an open webcasting platform which integrates with the major social networking applications and provides a user-controlled experience. ON24 launched the Platform 10 communications platform in 2011. Platform 10 features social media integration and mobile device delivery and is accessible from Internet Explorer and Firefox. All ON24 products are based on the platform, including Webcast Elite, a do-it-yourself webcasting solution which was also launched in 2011. In 2012 ON24 announced a product development strategy based on a new Virtual Communications Platform. In 2013, ON24 focused on the virtual marketing experience and the momentum of Webcast Elite. 2014 was a big year for ON24's Webcast Elite product adding the Marketing Edition, Engagement Score and Integration Services. Through the Integration Services, ON24 integrates with marketing automation partners such as Marketo, Eloqua, Exact Target, Hubspot, Microsoft CRM, NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Silverpop and Act-On. In 2015, ON24 is focusing on providing a webinar based solution for marketers.
