John Girard, with three fellow Stanford graduates, moved a few things around in his garage back in 1999 to found Clickability. After a decade, he’s the CEO of one of the world’s biggest web content management systems. It boasts an impressive advisory board with the likes of Tim Bradbury, President of American City Business Journals; Brian Buchwald, Senior Vice President of Local Digital Media and Multiplatform at NBC; Aiden Collie, former Senior Vice President of Internet Technology at Time Inc.; and Gordon Crovitz, previously Publisher of The Wall Street Journal. One of the company’s biggest group of clients are publishers.
Clickability is headquartered in San Francisco but has offices in New York and London. Girard has been a big proponent of Software As a Service (SaaS), and Clickability essentially sells customized software to clients depending on their needs: content creation, management, publishing and analytics. Clients include philly.com, NBC, the Tribeca Film Festival and Gray Television, which owns more than 30 stations.
Early in 2008, the privately held company reportedly closed on $8 million in investment funding from Shasta Ventures and Convergence Partners, adding to its initial investment seven years previously. Altogether the company has reportedly raised more than $15 million in funding.
A driving force behind Clickability's growth is its On-Demand Web Content Management Platform, which took home the 2008 CODIE Award for "Best Content Management Solution” from the Software and Information Industry Association. It was also named as a finalist for the award this year.
--Mark Miller
