Capterra

In the summer of 1999, Michael Ortner, the future founder of the company, working for a small Internet service company Digex in Maryland , discovered that the software industry is huge, but fragmented, and order can be brought into this “chaos”. He also realized that software makers spend most of their expenses on sales and promotion, rather than development. On November 1, 1999, Ortner founded the company Capterra. The name is a derivative of 2 Latin words: “Capto” ( Latin search ) and “ Terra ” ( Latin land, world ). ^{[6] [7]}

The seed financing (start-up capital) of the company amounted to several hundred thousand dollars, which Michael Ortner collected together with relatives and friends. At first, the company chose an unsuccessful model of monetization of its services, and also could not find vendors who would start paying it money. To cover the costs, Ortner collected $ 250,000 in debt with 18 credit cards and American Express cards. As he later admitted in his autobiographical article, he did not tell anyone about this, even family members and friends ^[7] . In April 2001, the company had the first client to pay money, Deltek from Herdnon . The second client came in May 2002, the third in July 2002. Each client paid approximately $ 100 per month. Later, instead of a fixed fee, Capterra switched to Pay per click . By the end of 2002, the company quickly expanded and the number of customers grew to 50. In June 2004, Michael Ortner paid off his last debt. The company's revenue in the same year reached $ 1 million. USA. A great help for the company was Google , which brought a lot of traffic to capterra.com . One of the largest companies that became Capterra customers was IBM , but most of the Capterra customers were small and medium-sized companies selling business software products. ^{[6] [7] [5]}

By 2007, the company already had 2 million annual software buyers and about 1,000 software manufacturers paid to get these customers. In 2007, Inc. magazine included the company in the list of "500 fast-growing private companies in the United States" ^[7] . From this year, and until 2015, the company did not leave the list of “Inc. 5000 ” ^[1] . At the end of 2014, the company expected to make a profit of $ 5 million and the expected revenue was $ 13 million ^[6] (according to Inc. statistics, the real revenue for the year was $ 13.8 million ^[1] ). Capterra at that time was called “ Yelp of business software ” ^{[Note. 1] [6]} . In 2007-2008 On the company's website, an opportunity was developed and launched for users to leave feedback on purchased software products. Negative reviews could spoil relations with sellers, and frighten off some of them, and therefore Ortner, and company management, considered for 3 months before introducing this system. But, the fears did not materialize, most of the reviews were positive, and not a single client terminated the contract with Capterra ^[5] . By 2015, the number of these reviews reached 25 thousand ^[8] .

In September 2015, Capterra was acquired by Gartner . The amount of the transaction was not disclosed. ^{[9] [10]}

Capterra was one of the first companies to master this segment of the market (providing free analytics and feedback on software products and selecting them online), and achieved serious success in it. There were practically no direct competitors for the Capterra in the 2000s. Consulting giants such as Forrester , Gartner , and others in the 2000s were still focused on large corporate clients who could buy the necessary analytics and consultations for money. But small and medium-sized businesses could not afford such expenses, and preferred services such as Capterra. But the success of the Capterra did not go unnoticed. In 2010, Nubera was created, which announced its goal of becoming “The Premier App Store for Business Software” (literally: the first business application store). Nubera launched a number of application review services, such as GetApp, AppStorm, AppAppeal, etc. In 2012, G2 Labs launches its online service G2 crowd , a business application review service where users had to log in using their LinkedIn account. . In the same year, a similar TrustRadius service was launched. In the same year, IT Central Station was launched - a new social network in which CIOs can write reviews and exchange opinions about the software products used ^[11] . New B2B services became so popular in the commercial environment that this phenomenon got its name - “Yelpification” of B2B software research ”(literally - Yelp- B2B software search search identification) ^{[12] [13]} .

In addition to getting into the rating of "Inc. 500 ”, Capterra was marked by a number of other honors and achievements. In 2008, Capterra was listed in the 2008 Best Jobs List of the Washington Business Journal ^[14] , and in 2015, it was listed on the Washingtonian ’s 50 Best Jobs in Washington State list ^[15] . Other achievements of the company:

• “The Best B2B Holiday Marketing Campaigns 2013” ​​by radius.com ^[16] ;
• Interactive Media Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Software Industry, 2008 and 2009 ^[17] ;
• 25th place in the rating "Virginia Chamber of Commerce Fantastic 50", 2007 ^[18] ;
• The company rating on trustpilot.com in 2016 was 9.5 points ^[19] .

• Business-to-business

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