Owler is an American internet company founded by Jim Fowler, Time Harsch, and Rajan Madhavan in 2011 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California. Owler is an internet-based company providing crowdsourced insights for industry news, company profiles, and polls that allow users to track, research, and follow companies in real-time.
Initially, the company was founded in 2011 as InfoArmy and launched publicly as such in June 2012. InfoArmy launched with a crowdsourcing model where two people would collaborate, compile, and report on one company profile. Many of the researchers contributing were freelancers, stay-at-home parents, or international BPO workers. The access fee for InfoArmy cost $99 for a one-year subscription; however, in January of 2013, the company announced its business model would not be sustainable in the long-term.
On February 1, 2013, InfoArmy relaunched as Owler, Inc. with a subscription-based business model that supports a freemium option for searching company information and news. Members receive access to a personalized feed, follow company sets, and daily email newsletter updates based on the user's customized feed. Additionally, members can "opt-in" for email updates when companies announce major news like funding rounds, acquisitions, and mergers.
Owler collects its information from two sources, employees who regularly contribute to the database and crowdsourced information provided by its users.
