Optimizely was founded in 2010 by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen, both formerly of Google. Optimizely completed the Y Combinatorseed accelerator program in the winter of 2010. In November 2010, Optimizely closed a US$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, GV, and InterWest Partners. In April 2013, Optimizely raised $28 million in Series A round funding. The round was led by Benchmark, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and Optimizely's existing investors Battery Ventures, InterWest Partners, and Google Ventures. Benchmark's Peter Fenton joined Optimizely's board of directors. As part of a larger international expansion plan, Optimizely announced in April 2013 the launch of their platform in nine additional languages: Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. On April 17, Optimizely held its first Opticon user conference, where they announced the launch of their 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 with participation from Benchmark and Bain Capital Ventures. As part of the round, Scott Weiss 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. In the same month Optimizely raised $58 million in Series C funding, led by Index Ventures, with participation from firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Battery Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Citi Ventures, Danhua Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Tenaya Capital. 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.
Software
Optimizely has two product offerings, Optimizely Web and Optimizely Full Stack, with tools for web experimentation, personalization, recommendations, and feature flags. These products are delivered in a software as a service model.
Awards and recognition
Optimizely was recognized as a Red Herring Top 100North 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.
