Ten years of KnowledgeOwl: Reflections on building something we’re proud of

KnowledgeOwl turned ten this year, which feels both long and exactly right. In that time, we’ve learned a lot, fallen down a few times, gotten back up, and kept building something that feels better every year.

As I look back, what stands out isn’t the numbers or milestones (though I’m deeply grateful for the 1,333 customers who’ve trusted us along the way). It’s the journey — the people, the values, and the quiet decisions that shaped who we’ve become.

Where it all began: From HelpGizmo to KnowledgeOwl

For those who don’t know the origin story, Pete Grigg and I came from SurveyGizmo (now Alchemer), where I was running the support team. Back in 2011, SurveyGizmo had this internal startup program, and one of the projects was HelpGizmo, originally envisioned as a full help desk solution with ticketing. When that program ended, the idea seemed to fade away too.

But here’s the thing about support teams: we’re resourceful. We’re problem-solvers. And we needed a better way to organize our knowledge.

So as a surprise 20% time project, our support development team brought HelpGizmo back to life as an internal knowledge base tool. And it worked. Really well.

By 2015, HelpGizmo had paying customers, and when SurveyGizmo’s CEO offered Pete and me the opportunity to buy it and run it as our own company, we jumped at the chance. We rebranded as KnowledgeOwl, and suddenly we were entrepreneurs.

The accidental kind of entrepreneurs. The kind who said “sure, why not?” and then had to figure out what being a company even meant.

Fun fact: before the owls, there was a zombie. Our original HelpGizmo tagline was “Real help isn’t dead,” and we had a mascot named RH (“real help”) crawling out of the ground on our team t-shirts. So KnowledgeOwl could’ve been zombie-themed — but you can’t spell “knowledge” without “owl,” so here we are.

The pivotal year: 2020 and finding our “Why”

If you’d asked me in 2015 what kind of company I wanted to build, I probably would’ve said, “One that doesn’t suck, or at least one that’s not evil.” Back then, I actually wrote this to a future customer:

“This is all still very new to us, but we have no plans to sell or flip the company. Our goal is to build a sustainable business that provides a service our customers love and need, and a stable, secure career for employees. We’ve been practicing customer-driven development, building features based on our customer needs, and we have no intention to change that. We want to stay in this space (knowledge base software) and continue building out an awesome product for our customers to use.”

At the time, that vision felt complete. We were building something sustainable and good, and that seemed like enough.

Then 2020 happened.

Like so many of us, I found myself doing a lot of reflection in 2020. During one of my therapy sessions, I told my therapist I wanted to be a better CEO. She asked what that would look like, and I said, “Well, for one we’d be a B Corp.”

She paused for a moment and asked, “So… why aren’t you?”

And that’s where it started.

2020 became a year of asking hard questions: What’s our mission? Our vision? Our values? What do we actually stand for?

It’s easy to list what we’re against: selling out, icky sales and marketing tactics, treating people poorly, growth and money at all costs. But what were we for? It was the same ideas we’d been promoting since 2015: sustainable growth, generous service, fair business, people first, long-term stewardship.

Our B Corp journey helped us turn those ideas into action. It gave us a framework to put our “fors” into practice through policies, systems, and everyday decisions.

We started our B Corp journey in May 2020. It took us over three years, multiple attempts, and countless hours of policy creation, soul-searching, and team discussions. But every challenge made us better. Every policy we documented forced us to be more intentional about our values.

On December 6, 2023, we became owlficially B Corp Certified. We earned a B Impact Score of 80.7, which is just enough to earn B Corp certification but significantly higher than the 50.9 median for ordinary businesses. But more importantly, we’d built the foundation for the company I’d always dreamed of: one where profit isn’t the only bottom line, where we’re legally committed to considering all our stakeholders — employees, customers, vendors, the community, and the planet — in every decision we make.

Building for our customers, not investors

Here’s something I’m really proud of: we’re 100% bootstrapped and customer-funded. We’ve never taken outside investment, and we probably never will.

That means we answer to exactly two entities: our customers and the IRS. But mostly our customers. And when I say customer, I include everyone we serve — from our coworkers to our communities. People first.

This freedom has allowed us to build KnowledgeOwl exactly the way it should be built: based entirely on what you tell us you need. Every major feature, every improvement, every “wow, this really makes my life easier” moment — that all comes from listening to our customers. You steer our product development, and that’s exactly how it should be.

What I love most about our work is how personal it still feels. Every feature we release traces back to a real person with a real challenge. That connection keeps us grounded, and it reminds us that great software is really just great service in another form.

That same philosophy continues to guide how we innovate.

Looking forward: Innovation that serves you

This year brought some of our biggest product updates yet: an AI chatbot, semantic search, new authoring tools, and Owl Analytics, reporting designed to save you from the hell that is GA4.

None of these were built in a vacuum. Every idea came from real conversations, requests, and challenges you shared with us. These tools exist to make your work simpler, your content stronger, and your days a little less frustrating (and, yes, to get your executives off your back).

We’re proud of what we’ve built, and even more excited about what we’ll build together next.

The dream that keeps me going

My big, hairy, audacious goal (what Jim Collins would call a “BHAG”) is to make KnowledgeOwl employee-owned. You don’t see a lot of employee-owned software companies out there, and I want to figure it out. I want to build something where the people doing the work have true ownership, true investment in our success.

It won’t be easy. But then again, nothing worth doing ever is.

What I’ve learned about people

If there’s one thing that defines who I am and how I lead, it’s this: I’m an optimist. I see the best in people. I believe that when you treat people well — your employees, your customers, your vendors, everyone — they’ll surprise you with their brilliance, their dedication, and their creativity.

That belief has proven true again and again over these ten years. Our team is small but mighty, our customers are generous with feedback and grace when we stumble, and our community of support professionals and documentarians continues to inspire me every single day.

Thank you

To everyone who’s been part of this journey — whether you’ve been with us since the HelpGizmo days, or you just signed up yesterday — thank you. You’re the reason we can do this. You’re the reason we get to keep improving, to keep innovating, to keep pushing to be better.

Here’s to ten years of KnowledgeOwl. Here’s to building something we’re proud of — not just because of what it does, but because of how we do it.

And here’s to the next ten years of learning, growing, and building together.

With gratitude and optimism,

Marybeth Alexander
Chief Executive Owl, KnowledgeOwl