Podium (company)


Podium is a privately held technology company headquartered in Lehi, Utah that develops cloud-based software to help businesses modernize customer interactions, such as messaging and customer feedback, and improve their online reputations.

History

Podium was founded in 2014 when Eric Rea got a call from his father about his tire shop's online reviews not being reflective of the verbal feedback he received from customers. His father was looking for a way to improve those reviews, but he didn’t know how to go about it. After some initial research, Rea found that existing solutions were largely antiquated, email-based tools.
Around the same time Dennis Steele was working for a PR firm focused on helping businesses improve their online reputation. Steele, familiar with the process, knew that many businesses and agencies were building online reputation strategies that were time-consuming and largely ineffective.
Determined to build a better service, Rea and Steele teamed up to develop a tool that would help small businesses build their online reputation through online reviews.
Podium was initially known as RepDrive before rebranding as Podium in 2015. The company raised $500,000 in an initial round of funding led by Peak Ventures.
In October 2017, Podium broke ground on its new 125,000-square-foot corporate headquarters in Lehi, Utah. The building was completed in August 2018.
In March 2020, Podium added payments technology to its product suite.

Y Combinator

Podium was selected to participate in the Winter 2016 class of Y Combinator, a startup incubator that has helped develop Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit. The company presented on the second demo day for the Winter 2016 batch on March 23, 2016.

Awards and recognition