Over 10,000 businesses worldwide pay Olark to help them create happier customers and better sales. They share the vision that our founders had five years ago in a house in Palo Alto - that live chat is more than just two people talking. It‘s an opportunity to connect with a real human being.
These 10,000 paying subscribers didn't show up overnight. Scroll down to learn more about what it takes to power the Olark network and how we got here.
“We created Olark to humanize the web and bring back relationships between business and their customers.” - Ben Congleton
Launched with the Y Combinator Summer 2009 class, Olark brought a vision to the market of an entirely new, on-page live chat experience. What if your customers could talk to you while still browsing your website without interruption? A great idea. We’ve never looked back.
1 year 7 months
February 2011
3 years 4 months
November 2012
5 years 4 months
November 2014
Zendesk has shown the world how fast the customer service cloud software market is growing. Just as Zendesk made waves when they announced 10,000 paying customers back in 2011, Olark is proving that live chat software is now a critical part of any customer service cloud solution. Zendesk made it to 48,000 customers in 2014. Can Olark make it there tomorrow still pulling itself by its bootstraps?
Launch |
10,000 |
48,000 |
|
Venture Backed |
2007
|
2011
|
2014
|
Bootstrapped |
2009
|
2014
|
?
|
“What live chat has become is truly remarkable. Every year we see thousands of new users come online, some just testing the water, others ready to push the limits of innovation.” - Matt Pizzimenti
51,900,135
63,589
~1.2%
29
Seconds
5
Minutes
“The customers are what make Olark truly unique. On any given day I might talk to a company making travel easier, leading whitewater rafting adventures, selling bikes, raising money for social justice issues, and streamlining business process, and no two days are ever the same.” - Roland Osborne
“ Since adding Olark, we're able to obtain data that has been extremely useful and actionable. Now almost exactly 50% of our support communications are over chat.”
- Ryan Hoskin, Customer Support Manager
August 19, 2009
“The landscape in 2014 has completely changed from when we started out in 2009, yet here we are - still bootstrapped, profitable and proud.” - Zach Steindler
32
Olarkers
10,911/km
Farthest trip taken by an Olarker to work in person. Sao Paulo to Seattle.
150,057
Pets
760,939
HipChat messages sent
1,000+
Climbing walls climbed
1
Dungeons and Dragons games played
30+
Times customers have sent goodies to an Olark office
322,643
Desk.com support tickets answered
1,925
JIRA tickets opened
153
Github repositories
199.82
Average chats per day
1,657
Tshirts mailed
250
Servers