Optimizely
The digital experience platform born twice: once as the 2010 San Francisco A/B testing startup, again in 2021 when acquirer Episerver — bought by Insight Partners for $1.16B in 2018 — took the name of the company it had just acquired.
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- Location
- New York City, New York, United States
- Country
- United States
- Founded
- 2010, by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen (some reports say 2009)
- Current ownership
- Private; Insight Partners portfolio company since the 2018 Episerver buyout
- CEO
- Alex Atzberger (since December 2019)
- The reverse-name deal
- Episerver acquired Optimizely in October 2020, then renamed the combined company Optimizely in January 2021
- Key acquisition under the Optimizely name
- Zaius customer data platform, announced March 22, 2021 (became Optimizely Data Platform)
- Product suite
- Content management, commerce, experimentation, personalization, customer data (Optimizely One)
Overview
Optimizely is a digital experience platform company that has had two lives: it was founded in 2010 by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen, two former Google product managers, as a self-serve A/B testing startup incubated at Y Combinator, and it became the name of a much larger company in January 2021, when Swedish-rooted content management vendor Episerver — itself acquired by Insight Partners in 2018 — rebranded the combined business under the Optimizely name after buying the original Optimizely (TechCrunch, Technology Record). It is privately held, with Insight Partners as its owner via the 2018 Episerver buyout (KMWorld).
The origin story explains why the acquirer took the target’s name. Siroker had been director of analytics for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, where testing which fundraising buttons raised the most money became a defining tactic; the insight was that commercially available testing tools required engineers, so Siroker and Koomen built a platform any organization could use with no statistics degree (TechCrunch). By May 2014, when Andreessen Horowitz led a $57 million Series B, the company reported more than 7,000 customers, half a million experiments created, and seven billion web experiences optimized (TechCrunch).
The acquisition that renamed the acquirer
In September 2020 Episerver announced it had agreed to acquire Optimizely for an undisclosed sum in a cash-and-stock deal, with Insight Partners acting as strategic advisor and sponsor and Goldman Sachs advising Optimizely (TechCrunch). At the time, Optimizely had raised more than $200 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and GV, served more than 1,000 customers including Gap, StubHub, IBM and The Wall Street Journal, had laid off 15% of its staff earlier that year citing COVID-19, and was led by CEO Jay Larson, who had replaced Siroker in 2017 (TechCrunch). The acquisition was expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020 (TechCrunch).
Then came the unusual move. In January 2021 Episerver announced it was rebranding the combined company as Optimizely, launching an Optimization-as-a-Service offering alongside a new release of its content management software (Technology Record). CEO Alex Atzberger — who had joined Episerver in December 2019 after leading customer experience at SAP — later explained the logic: he had long questioned whether the Episerver brand resonated in the U.S. market, and a “digital gravity study” measuring brand awareness relative to search results showed the Optimizely name was far better known among digital leaders and CMOs, with even content-management searches surfacing Optimizely (TechTarget). As Atzberger put it, the acquired company’s origin story — a Silicon Valley startup born from the Obama campaign’s fundraising tests — gave it a brand cachet that a European CMS vendor could not manufacture (TechTarget).
Private equity ownership and the build-up after the merger
The company Optimizely is today sits inside a private-equity ownership arc. Insight Partners agreed to acquire Episerver in September 2018 in a transaction valuing it at $1.16 billion — confirmed by deal advisor Houlihan Lokey, which announced the deal on September 6, 2018 (KMWorld, Houlihan Lokey). Episerver’s own roots run back to Stockholm in 1994 as a content management software company (TechCrunch). Insight sponsored the Optimizely acquisition two years later and remains the owner of the combined company; no independent reporting of a subsequent ownership change was found (TechCrunch).
Post-rebrand, Atzberger kept acquiring. In March 2021 Optimizely acquired Zaius, a customer data platform, for an undisclosed sum — the deal was announced March 22 and confirmed by Zaius’s legal counsel WilmerHale (TechTarget, WilmerHale). Zaius brought more than 50 prebuilt connectors to e-commerce platforms and data clouds and 125 marketing orchestration “recipes”; Optimizely had sought a CDP for over a year after concluding it needed to ingest customer data from outside sources, and buying was faster than building (TechTarget). The acquisition also became the basis for the Optimizely Data Platform (TechTarget). Atzberger told TechTarget in 2022 he had done five acquisitions since becoming CEO — a count that includes idio, Insite, Optimizely, Zaius and the marketing work-management vendor Welcome, acquired in early 2022 (TechTarget).
What this profile does not claim
This profile does not claim a single founding year for the original Optimizely: TechCrunch reported 2010 in 2014 and 2009 in 2020, and the discrepancy is flagged, not resolved. It does not state a single figure for Insight Partners’ 2018 Episerver buyout — the reported number is $1.16 billion per KMWorld, Houlihan Lokey and Insight’s own announcement, versus $1.1 billion in TechCrunch’s 2020 reporting. The price Episerver paid for Optimizely was never disclosed and is not stated. As a private company, Optimizely does not publish revenue or customer figures; the profile states only dated customer counts from reporting at the time. The current ownership claim rests on the absence of any reported later sale — private-company ownership can change without public disclosure.
Timeline
- 2010
- Dan Siroker (director of analytics for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign) and fellow Google product manager Pete Koomen found Optimizely through the Y Combinator winter class, building self-serve A/B testing for non-technical marketers.
- 2014
- Optimizely raises $57 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, reporting 7,000 customers, half a million experiments and seven billion web experiences optimized.
- 2018
- Insight Partners agrees to acquire Episerver — the Stockholm-rooted content management company founded in 1994 — in a deal valuing it at $1.16 billion.
- 2020
- Episerver agrees to acquire Optimizely for an undisclosed sum in a cash-and-stock deal, with Insight Partners as strategic advisor and sponsor; the acquisition closes in the fourth quarter.
- 2021
- In January, Episerver rebrands the combined company as Optimizely, launching Optimization-as-a-Service; in March it acquires the Zaius customer data platform, later rebranded as Optimizely Data Platform.
- 2022
- CEO Alex Atzberger explains the rebrand as driven by a "digital gravity study" showing the Optimizely name far better recognized by digital leaders and CMOs, and says he has done five acquisitions since taking the role.
What we could not verify
These claims came up in research and could not be confirmed. They are recorded here rather than published as fact or quietly dropped. If you hold a source that settles one, please tell us.
- Original Optimizely's founding year is reported as 2010 (TechCrunch 2014, Wikipedia) and 2009 (TechCrunch 2020) — the discrepancy is flagged, not resolved
- The 2018 Insight Partners buyout is reported as $1.16B (KMWorld, Houlihan Lokey, Insight) and $1.1B (TechCrunch 2020) — the discrepancy is flagged, not resolved
- The price Episerver paid for Optimizely in 2020 was never disclosed; no figure is stated
- As a private company, Optimizely does not publish revenue or customer counts; no current figures are stated
- No independent reporting of an ownership change after Insight Partners' 2018 acquisition was found; ownership is stated as Insight Partners on that basis
Sources
8 sources (8 tier 2), each opened and read against the claim it supports. Every source is independent of the subject; no first-party material is cited. See the source policy.
Built entirely from independently fetched and fully read sources; no first-party material was used, not even for uncontested facts. The founding and funding arc comes from TechCrunch reporting in 2014 and 2020 (tier2); the 2018 Insight buyout from KMWorld and Houlihan Lokey, the deal's financial advisor (tier2); the January 2021 rebrand from TechnologyRecord (tier2); the rebrand rationale and Welcome acquisition from a 2022 TechTarget CEO interview (tier2); and the Zaius acquisition from TechTarget and the law firm WilmerHale (tier2). Wikipedia served only as a lead index and is not cited.
- Supports: Founded 2010 by Siroker and Koomen, Y Combinator, Siroker's Obama campaign role, $57M Series B led by a16z, 7,000 customers, 500k experiments, 7B experiences, $88M total raised Open original source
- Supports: Acquisition agreement (undisclosed sum, cash+stock), >$200M raised, 1,000+ customers, COVID layoffs, Episerver founded Stockholm 1994, $1.1B Insight figure, Insight as strategic advisor/sponsor, Jay Larson CEO, Atzberger quotes Open original source
- Supports: Insight acquires Episerver at $1.16B valuation, definitive agreement Sept 2018, Episerver founded 1994, office locations Open original source
- Supports: $1.16B valuation confirmed, announced Sept 6, 2018, Houlihan Lokey as special advisor to Episerver Open original source
- Supports: Rebrand to Optimizely (Jan 2021), Optimization-as-a-Service launch, new CMS release, CEO quotes Open original source
- Supports: Rebrand rationale (digital gravity study, Optimizely name better-known with CMOs), Atzberger joined late 2019, acquisition Oct 2020 / name Jan 2021, Welcome acquisition, five acquisitions as CEO, customers Zoom/Shell/GE/Chewy/Saks Open original source
- Supports: Zaius CDP acquisition (undisclosed sum), 50+ connectors, 125 recipes, build-vs-buy rationale, naming rationale (more recognized brand, drops "server") Open original source
- Supports: Zaius acquisition announced March 22, 2021, deal counsel confirmation Open original source
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