MarkMonitor, Inc. is a company that provides Internet access outside the firewall security and Internet brand

Brand

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...

 protection services. The company was founded in 1998 in Boise, Idaho, and is currently headquartered in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

, United States. Companies that use MarkMonitor's services include Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

, Google, and the Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...

. The company was the 43rd largest domain name registrar

Domain name registrar

A domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by both ICANN and generic top-level domain registry to sell gTLDs and/or by a country code top-level domain registry to sell ccTLDs; to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of...

 in terms of number of registered domains, in 2007.

History

The company was founded in Boise, Idaho in 1998, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. James Hepworth and Faisal Shah founded MarkMonitor (Boise Idaho) in 1998, Hepworth and Shah were early adopters of the philosophy that the Internet and its content will become a new market for potential corporate theft - branded and pioneered by Hepworth and Shah as “Brand Protection” and “Outside the Firewall” security. Hepworth and Shah built MarkMonitor from just “two guys looking at each other” to a global business that has regional offices in the UK, Spain, (USA) San Francisco, Boise and Washington DC, and Australia.

Growth

Since 1998, MarkMonitor has expanded into a hundred million dollar plus business with ~ 280 employees and has strategic alliances with Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft, Yahoo!, American Online, Inc., Kroll, the Steele Foundation, Earthlink, Facebook, Google, Wikimedia Foundation and LexisNexis.

Board members

MarkMonitor’s board members include: Salim; Dave Barrett, general partner, Polaris Venture Partners

Polaris Venture Partners

Polaris Venture Partners is a venture capital firm specializing in seed and early stage investments particularly in companies engaged in the information technology and life sciences sectors....

; Stephen J. Harrick, managing director and partner, Institutional Venture Partners

Institutional Venture Partners

Institutional Venture Partners is a US based private equity investment firm focusing on later-stage venture capital and growth equity investments. IVP is one of the oldest venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road founded by Reid W...

; Jim Sayre, president, Cargill Ventures; and Warren Weiss, general partner, Foundation Capital

Foundation capital

Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and manages over $2.4 billion in investment capital. It raised its seventh and largest fund of $750 million in April 2008...

. In 2009 MarkMonitor added Susan Whiting to its board of directors. Whiting has decades of valuable experience as vice chair of Nielsen Co. and working with marketing organizations of some of the world’s leading brands.

Funding

Sterling Business Development Co. Foundation Capital, a Silicon Valley venture firm that has $1.3 billion in investments, Foundation has invested in two startup companies that have been founded by Hepworth and Shah. Silicon Valley investors rarely place money outside the valley.