Owler

Not to be confused with the .

Owler (formerly named InfoArmy, Inc.) is an American internet company headquartered in San Mateo, California, with an office in Coimbatore, India. Owler crowdsources business insights by providing news alerts, company profiles, and polls and allows members to follow, track, and research companies in real time. The company was founded in 2011 and has over 1 million active users.

InfoArmy was founded in 2011 by Jim Fowler, Rajan Madhavan, and Tim Harsch. Fowler previously founded Jigsaw (now called Data.com), another crowdsourcing Data as a Service platform that was sold for 175M to Salesforce Inc. in 2010.

InfoArmy launched publicly in June 2012, and had 28 employees as of October 23, 2012.

InfoArmy began as a crowdsourcing model where two-person research teams would compile one report on each company. Most researchers were stay-at-home parents, freelance workers, and international BPO workers. Access to InfoArmy’s reports cost $99 for a year-long subscription and three quarterly reports.

In January 2013, InfoArmy announced that its business model would not be sustainable in the long term.

On February 1, 2013, InfoArmy relaunched as Owler, Inc. using a different business model. Owler offers a free mobile and online platform for company information and interactive business news. Members can choose to "follow" a set of companies, and Owler provides a personalized newsfeed and daily email summary of the latest news on those companies. Owler members can also sign up to receive immediate notifications when major business events (such as funding, acquisitions, or leadership changes) occur. The competitive intelligence featured on Owler comes from two primary places: it is both hand curated by Owler employees from sources across the web, and crowdsourced from Owler users, referred to as the “Owler Community.” Unlike other business information services, Owler polls its members to gauge market sentiment and current trends.