SiteOwner was formed in 1999 in Sydney Australia oursis a growing team of 55 business wizards, code ninjas and designers with skills straight out of a Marvel comic. And we're on a mission. It's a mission about Online Businesses, not Websites. It's a mission about giving our clients what their they are asking us to build and the tolls to help them succeed online. It's a mission about making technology that helps business owners succeed in today's challenging business environment.
Websites are soooo 1997. The vast majority of websites on the web (excluding, of course, the more notorious kind) are business websites. Let's examine that term - business websites. Websites built for the purpose of generating or assisting businesses. Business websites have common attributes - they often have business related goals; they often have contact forms and other methods to capture sales inquiries; they might sell products; they often contain product and service information and so on and so on.
It's these common attributes that show us why taking a "website" mindset is so wrong. A website is just some pages in a browser. An Online Business, however, has business goals - marketing, sales, customer service and so on.
We believe that Online Businesses are what 99% of your clients are looking for. We believed back in 1199 that a website mindset is unproductive and unhelpful, and we still believe it now.
SiteOwner's BC is a platform built for Online Businesses - with business goals and business tools and business.. well, everything. It's also a platform designed to help you, as a web professional, to build Online Businesses. So you can see - we're pretty serious about this Online Business thing. That's why it's our mission to help you build Online Businesses, not Websites.
The BC story starts in 2004, in Sydney, Australia, with two experienced technology entrepreneurs - Bardia Housman and Adam Broadway. After initially bonding over a common love of beer, Bardia and Adam realised they shared another similarity - both were dissatisfied with the lack of serious tools for business owners to grow their business online. So, as most of these stories go, they decided to branch out and build the sort of online business platform they were looking for.
Before long, they were joined by Colin Frost, a whip-crack never-say-die business development manager. He was shortly followed by Brett Welch, programmer-turned-marketing guy who would later also launch the GoodBarry brand. Brett is writing this text right now, and for reasons of modesty cannot adequately blow his own trumpet.
This team of brave adventurers were joined by other intrepid souls, and before long Business Catalyst, powered by hungry adoption by web designers around Australia, started to grow into a serious business with international potential. In 2007 BC launched the GoodBarry brand, a retail exploration which further cemented their market reach.
In 2008 Business Catalyst opened their first international office in San Francisco, USA, to better service their growing Partner base in the US and Europe. It was around this time that BC's platform for web professional's gained the notice of Adobe Systems.
In 2009, Adobe Systems acquired Business Catalyst. Adobe Systems saw BC as a great complement to Adobe's existing products and services and the BC team completely agreed. Now, in 2010, the same BC team that started it all is working harder than ever on making Adobe Business Catalyst the best online business platform for business professionals everywhere.
Its this partnership that gives our clients success online