Khoros, LLC

Last updated
Khoros
Type Private company
IndustryInternet
Founded2019
Headquarters
Austin, Texas
,
United States
Key people
 Chris Tranquill, CEO
Services
Revenue$252M
Number of employees
1300+
Parent Vista Equity Partners

Khoros, formerly Spredfast + Lithium, is a global customer engagement software company that provides online community management, social media marketing, social media analytics, digital care, and content management software and services to enterprise brands and agencies. Khoros owns over a dozen patents for social media marketing, online community, and care technologies.

Contents

Khoros is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with offices in San Francisco, Portland, New York City, London, Bangalore, Paris, Sydney, and Hamburg. The largest office, with almost 500 employees, is located in Austin. [1] As of 2022, Khoros has over 1,500 employees and works with more than 2,000 brands globally.

History

Khoros is the product of a 2019 merger between two software companies: Spredfast and Lithium Technologies.

Spredfast

Spredfast was founded in 2008 by a group of software engineers and social marketing experts based in Austin, Texas. Spredfast grew quickly as a startup, raising almost $140 million in funding from 2008-2016.[ citation needed ]

In 2012, Spredfast launched their first annual user conference, the Smart Social Summit, with the goal of helping social media marketers learn from peers and industry leaders. The 2012 event was located in Austin, but due to its popularity, Spredfast held additional Smart Social Summits in New York and London in subsequent years. Speakers at these events have included Michelle Obama, Arianna Huffington, and Trevor Noah. [2] [3]

In April 2014, Spredfast acquired Mass Relevance, a social curation company whose technology aggregates and filters tweets to be displayed on broadcast TV. [4] In August 2015, Spredfast acquired data-focused social marketing company Shoutlet. [5]

Before announcing its merger with Lithium in 2018, Spredfast had more than 500 employees and more than 650 customers in 84 countries. [6]

Lithium Technologies

Lithium was founded in 2001 by a group including Dennis Fong, Lyle Fong, Michel Thouati, Kirk Yokomizo, John Joh, Nader Alizadeh, Michael Yang, and Matt Ayres. From the time of its founding to the time of its acquisition in 2017, Lithium secured over $150 million in funding through multiple rounds of investment.[ citation needed ]

In late 2008, Lithium completed a detailed analysis of a decade's worth of proprietary data that represents billions of interactions and millions of users across dozens of communities. This research helped Lithium contribute to a new standard for measuring online community health – the Community Health Index. [7]

On May 11, 2010, Lithium acquired social media monitoring (SMM) provider Scout Labs, whose service allows brands to engage with their customers beyond the community and monitor, map, and measure customer conversations on the social web. [8]

In October 2012, Lithium acquired the Austin-based company Social Dynamx, which provided cloud-based software that allows large call centers to manage their social customer service. [9] Lithium renamed the former Social Dynamx product "Lithium Social Web" and integrated it with its core Lithium Communities product.

On March 27, 2014: Lithium Technologies acquired Klout, a software that rates users’ influence on social media. The higher a user’s “Klout Score,” the more influential they were on social media. Lithium closed the service on May 25, 2018. [10]

In June 2015, Microsoft and Lithium signed a strategic alliance agreement to integrate Lithium social media and community data into Microsoft Dynamics. [11]

Merger

In May 2017, Lithium announced that it had been acquired by Vista Equity Partners, an Austin-based private equity firm focused on software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. [12] In October 2018, Vista Equity Partners acquired Spredfast and announced that it would be merged with Lithium Technologies. [13]

On March 5, 2019, Spredfast and Lithium formally announced their new name: Khoros, the Greek word for chorus.

In August 2019, Khoros announced that Jack Blaha would take over as chief executive officer. Blaha was formerly CEO at Lone Wolf Technologies, another company in the Vista Equity Partners portfolio.

On September 23, 2019, Khoros opened its new office in Northwest Austin.

Acquisitions

In January 2021, Khoros acquired two companies: Topbox, an enterprise customer experience (CX) analytics software maker, and Flow.ai, a conversational AI platform for designing and managing chatbots.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quark (company)</span> American software company

Quark Software Inc. is a privately owned software company which specializes in enterprise publishing software for automating the production of customer communications. The company's original goal was to "create software that would be the platform for publishing", just as quarks are the basis for all matter. The company is best known for its desktop page layout and design software, QuarkXPress, although this has now become secondary to its other products and services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insight Enterprises</span> Global technology provider

Insight Enterprises Inc. is an Arizona-based publicly traded global technology company that focuses on business-to-business and information technology (IT) capabilities for enterprises. Insight focuses on three, primary solution areas: cloud and data center transformation, connected workforce, and digital innovation. The company is listed on the Fortune 500 and has offices in 19 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BigMachines</span> Configure, price, quote cloud software owned by Oracle

BigMachines, now Oracle Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ), was a software company founded in 2000 by Godard Abel and Christopher Shutts, which was acquired by Oracle in 2013. The software is designed to integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and other business systems to help companies automate the sales process. It specializes in software for configure, price and quote (CPQ). It can be used by internal teams, channel partners, VARs, distributors, customers, and outside representatives and partners.

Wrike, Inc. is an American project management application service provider based in San Jose, California. Wrike also has offices in Dallas, Tallinn, Nicosia, Dublin, Tokyo, Melbourne and Prague.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magento</span> Open-source e-commerce platform

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. Magento source code is distributed under Open Software License. Magento was acquired by Adobe Inc in May 2018 for $1.68 billion.

Solera Inc is an American company based in Texas which provides risk management and asset protection software and services to the automotive industry and property insurance marketplace. Solera also provides digital identity management services, as well as re-underwriting and data analytics for the automotive, property and casualty insurance industries. Solera is active in 88 countries across six continents.

Klout was a website and mobile app that used social media analytics to rate its users according to online social influence via the "Klout Score", which was a numerical value between 1 and 100. In determining the user score, Klout measured the size of a user's social media network and correlated the content created to measure how other users interact with that content. Klout launched in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vista Equity Partners</span> American investment firm

Vista Equity Partners is one of the largest American private equity firms focused on financing software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. Vista has invested in hundreds of companies, including Citrix, Ping Identity, and Marketo.

Acquia is a software-as-a-service company co-founded by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson to provide enterprise products, services, and technical support for the open-source web content management platform Drupal.

Neolane, Inc. is a conversational marketing technology provider, which develops marketing automation and cross-channel campaign management software and services for business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers. In 2012, Neolane recorded $58 million in revenue representing 40% year-over-year growth. It was announced in June 2013 that Adobe Systems would buy Neolane for $600 million.

Mediaocean is an advertising services and software company, headquartered in New York City.

Marketo, Inc. is an American software company, with its headquarters in San Mateo, California. Marketo develops and sells marketing automation software for account-based marketing and other marketing services and products, including SEO and content creation.

Sprinklr is an American software company based in New York City that develops a SaaS customer experience management (CXM) platform. The company's software, also called Sprinklr, combines different applications for social media marketing, social advertising, content management, collaboration, employee advocacy, customer care, social media research, and social media monitoring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Planview</span> Software company

Planview is a global enterprise software company headquartered in Austin, Texas.

Blue Prism is the trading name of the Blue Prism Group plc, a British multinational software corporation that pioneered and makes enterprise robotic process automation (RPA) software that provides a digital workforce designed to automate complex, end-to-end operational activities. In March 2022, Blue Prism was acquired by SS&C Technologies.

Forcepoint, is an American multinational corporation software company headquartered in Austin, Texas, that develops computer security software and data protection, cloud access security broker, firewall and cross-domain solutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bazaarvoice</span> American software company

Bazaarvoice is a technology company based in Austin, Texas, that provides software that allows brands and retailers to collect and display several types of user-generated content (UGC) on their e-commerce websites. Bazaarvoice's services include product ratings and reviews, questions and answers, sampling, visual and social content, insights, social commerce and social publishing.

Ribbon Communications Inc. is a public company that makes software, IP and optical networking solutions for service providers, enterprises and critical infrastructure sectors. The company was formed in 2017, following the merger of Genband and Sonus Networks and is headquartered in Plano, Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Datto (company)</span> American cybersecurity and data backup company

Datto was an American cybersecurity and data backup company. Founded in 2007 in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 2017 it became a subsidiary of the Vista Equity Partners and merged with Autotask Corporation before being acquired by Kaseya in late 2022 and dissolved, being retained as a brand name only.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamf</span> U.S. technology company

Jamf is a software company best known for developing Jamf Pro, a mobile device management system.

References

  1. ↑ "Spredfast is Merging with a Vista Equity Partners-Owned Company in San Francisco". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2020-12-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ↑ "Michelle Obama to return to Austin as guest of social media software maker". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ↑ "Video: Trevor Noah Talks Tech, Trump and Social Media in Austin". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. ↑ "Spredfast, Mass Relevance Unite Social Marketing Systems" . Retrieved 2020-12-02.
  5. ↑ "Spredfast Acquires Shoutlet For A Social Marketing Team-Up". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  6. ↑ "Spredfast and Lithium Technologies Announce Merger | CustomerThink". customerthink.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  7. ↑ "Community Health Index for Online Communities". Khoros | Digital care, communities, & social media software. 2019-02-11. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  8. ↑ "News Analysis: Lithium's Acquisition of Scout Labs Ups The Ante in Social CRM". Enterprise Irregulars. 2010-05-11. Retrieved 2020-12-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ↑ "The Daily Start-Up: Lithium Technologies Acquires Social Dynamx, Pairing Social Marketers". Wall Street Journal. 2012-10-09. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  10. ↑ "We no longer sell Klout". Khoros | Digital care, communities, & social media software. 2019-09-23. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  11. ↑ Technologies, Lithium. "Lithium And Microsoft Form Strategic Alliance To Deliver Integrated Community And CRM For The Enterprise". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  12. ↑ Inc, Lithium Technologies. "Lithium Enters into Definitive Agreement to be Acquired by Vista Equity Partners". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  13. ↑ "Under guidance of Vista Equity, software maker Spredfast to merge; Austin to lose an HQ". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2020-12-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.