This article first appeared at the OneStream website by John O’Rourke
Amazing as it may seem, 2022 marks the 10-year anniversary of OneStream’s founding. Actually, the founders began working on the software and signed the company’s first customer in 2011, but the official formation of OneStream Software LLC occurred in 2012. Since then, it’s been pedal to the metal acquiring new customers, hiring staff, enhancing the platform, and expanding our market presence. Read on to learn about some of the key milestones the company has achieved over the past 10 years and what lies ahead for 2022.
Humble Beginnings
To commemorate our 10th anniversary, the company recently held a virtual meetup where employees could connect in small breakout groups to share their favorite memories from the past 10 years. Unfortunately, the number of attendees exceeded the capabilities of the Zoom platform, so the breakouts never happened. But several memories were shared across the larger group that joined the session. Here are a few that stood out for me.
The interesting thing is that while we have all been working mostly virtually for the past 24 months, OneStream started out virtually. Co-founder and CEO Tom Shea was in Rochester, MI, CTO Bob Powers was in Stratford, CT and President Craig Colby was in Atlanta.
The original Rochester, MI office was located above a sporting goods store on Main Street. The small team was crammed into a single office, with a number of servers that were pouring out so much heat that they had to turn on the air conditioning in the winter!
CTO Bob Powers’ office was his boat, which was docked at a marina in Stratford, CT. When he decided to hire some more staff in Stratford, Bob was able to lease some office space in a building in the marina, and we still have that office today.
Bob and Tom collaborated in the development of the OneStream platform via phone for months at a time and only met in person once or twice per year in the early days. During the meetup, Bob mentioned that his wife used to kid him about his “imaginary friend Tom” who he was speaking with all the time, but never met, so she wondered if he was a real person.
While Bob and Tom were developing the OneStream CPM software platform, they would occasionally demonstrate the latest version to the remote team, which included Craig Colby. According to Tom Shea, as the platform was maturing Craig kept asking if he could start selling it. Wanting to make sure the platform was proven with early adopter customers before selling it more broadly, Tom suggested that Craig hold off and keep working on the website. Which he did for several years – finally getting a chance to begin selling the software to customers in 2012.
Hitting Key Milestones
With the mission of making each customer success and a reference, OneStream started working with its first customer (Federal Mogul) in 2012 – implementing and enhancing the software based on their requirements. Then it was onto the 2nd customer (AAA Life Insurance) then the third, fourth, and so on.
As the company acquired more customers, the leadership team added staff in Engineering, Support, Consulting, Sales, Marketing, IT, Finance, HR, and other functions. But as a bootstrapped company that was funded by the founders, the leadership team was careful not to get too far ahead of itself on hiring. Here are some of the key milestones that were achieved over the past 10 years.
2012: OneStream Software LLC is formed.
2013: OneStream hosts its first Splash user conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
2014: OneStream announced its expanded US headquarters with a new office in Rochester, Michigan, and added offices in Stratford, CT, and Western Europe to accommodate its explosive growth in customers and staff. This facility debuted with ample space to house the headquarters staff, a training center, basketball court, fitness center, and other amenities for employees.
2015: The true test of a platform is whether it’s extensible. In 2015 OneStream launched its innovative solutions MarketPlace, an “apps store” concept that enables customers and partners to download, configure, and deploy additional solutions to quickly address new requirements and extend their investment in the OneStream platform.
2016: OneStream hit a key milestone, acquiring its 100th customer in 2016. In addition, the company opened its Manchester, UK office to provide improved local support for its growing customer base in EMEA.
2018: OneStream held its first Splash user conference in EMEA in Amsterdam. OneStream Software also was ranked 212th Fastest Growing Company in North America on Deloitte’s 2018 Technology Fast 500™.
2019: KKR Investment and Unicorn status. OneStream entered into an agreement to receive a significant investment from KKR and a valuation of over $1.0 billion. OneStream was also recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Close Solutions and Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Cloud FP&A Solutions.
2020: OneStream acquired its 500th customer in early 2020, was recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud FP&A Solutions, and Best Workplace by Inc. Magazine and ComputerWorld. The company also reported record revenue growth in Q3 in spite of the global pandemic.
What’s coming in 2022
The year 2021 included continued momentum for OneStream, reaching $200M in ARR, adding 250 customers to take us over 900 globally, and hiring our 1000th employee. In 2022, we expect to acquire our 1000th customer, open a new headquarters office in Birmingham, MI and we’re looking forward to hosting over 1500 customers, partners, employees, and other guests at our Splash User Conference and Partner Summit May 23 – 26th in San Antonio, TX.
Click here to learn more and to register for Splash 2022!
