Net Perceptions was a leading seller of personalization technology during the Internet boom of the late 1990s, based in Minneapolis. One of their first customers was Amazon.
In the Summer of 1996, David Gardiner, a former Ph.D. student of John Riedl, introduced Riedl to Steven Snyder. Snyder had been an early employee at Microsoft, but had left Microsoft to come to Minnesota to do a Ph.D. in Psychology. He realized the commercial potential of collaborative filtering, and encouraged the team to found a company in April 1996. By June, Gardiner, Snyder, Miller, Riedl, and Konstan incorporated their company, and by July had their first round of funding, from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Net Perceptions went on to be one of the leading companies in personalization during the Internet boom of the late 1990s, went public, and acquired marketing services startup KD1 for $126 million. The company stayed in business until 2004.
In 2004, Kanders & Co. bought the company and moved it to Greenwich, Connecticut "to build a diversified, global industrial products group."