Industry Research Founded 2012 Type Privately held company | Website www.g2crowd.com Headquarters Chicago | |
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Key people Tim Handorf (President and Cofounder)
Godard Abel (Cofounder)
Matt Gorniak (Cofounder)
Mark Myers (Cofounder)
Mike Wheeler (Cofounder)
Adrienne Weissman (CMO)
Michael Fauscette (CRO) | ||
Working at g2 crowd
G2 Crowd is a peer-to-peer, business software review platform headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It was known as G2 Labs, Inc. until 2013. The firm was launched in May 2012 by former BigMachines employees, with a focus on aggregating user reviews for business software. Competitors include TrustRadius, Gartner, Inc., Capterra and Crozdesk.
Contents
- Working at g2 crowd
- Service
- Research Reviews
- History
- Funding
- Significant Milestones
- Awards
- 2013
- 2015
- References
Service
Reviewers sign in with a LinkedIn account and can review the products they use. To encourage reviewers to participate, some users are compensated by G2 Crowd with gift cards, contest rewards and reputation points on the website. G2 Crowd attempts to identify fraudulent user reviews through an algorithm that identifies employees at companies reviewing their own products. In addition, reviews are manually screened and voted on by the community to discourage spam and unhelpful comments. G2 Crowd also requests screenshots of the reviewer using the product for verification purposes.
Information from reviews is aggregated to score business software products on The GridSM, which acts as a competitor to Gartner’s magic quadrant review model. Satisfaction and market presence ratings are generated based on product reviews and market presence data, which are then used to plot products onto a quadrant. The four quadrants in a G2 Crowd Grid are contenders, niche, leaders and high performers.
Research Reviews
The reviews submitted to G2 Crowd are available for public consumption. An individual researching software can build their profile and identify information provided by reviewers similar to themselves.
History
In 2011 five former employees of BigMachines – Tim Handorf, Godard Abel, Matt Gorniak, Mark Myers and Mike Wheeler – founded G2 Crowd, with Handorf serving as president. A beta version of the review site launched in December 2012, with several thousand users testing the service before its full launch in 2013.
In February 2015, former LinkedIn executive, Adrienne Weissman joined G2 Crowd as the organizations new chief marketing officer. G2 Crowd named Michael Fauscette as the organization’s chief research officer in February, 2016.
Funding
In 2014, G2 Crowd raised $2.3 million in seed funding from investors, including Chicago Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Andrew Filipowski, and Greg Jones, founding CEO of uBid. In 2015, G2 Crowd raised an additional $7 million in Series A funding led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital. Investors included 2014’s contributors in addition to co-founder Godard Abel, Thomas Lehrman and Scott Dorsey. G2 Crowd announced it would use these funds to invest in its leadership and capabilities.
Significant Milestones
In December 2015, G2 Crowd surpassed 50,000 verified-user product reviews, more than 28,000 of which were submitted that year. The firm also reported that more than 3,000 reviews were submitted per month on average. In January 2016, G2 Crowd reported more than 400,000 sessions per month, and includes more than 400 product categories.
Awards
G2 Crowd has been nominated for and earned a number of awards since its founding for its growth and culture.