| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Founder(s) | Michael McDerment Joe Sawada |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Canada |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Employees | 85 (2011) |
| Website | freshbooks.com |
| Alexa rank | 2,503 (March 2011[update])[1] |
| Users | 1.6 million (accounts, not visitors) (As of 14 July 2010[update][2] |
| Available in | English |
| Launched | 2003 |
| Current status | Active |
FreshBooks is an online invoicing software as a service for freelancers, small businesses, agencies, and professionals. It is produced by the software company 2ndSite Inc. which is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The product includes a myriad of other related features, such as time tracking, expense tracking, recurring billing, online payment collection, the ability to mail invoices through the U.S. Post, and support tickets.
Backbone Magazine rated FreshBooks Canada's #1 Web 2.0 pioneer in 2009 and 2nd place in 2008.[1]
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2ndSite was founded by Mike McDerment and Joe Sawada in 2003 out of McDerment's previous Internet marketing consulting business Anicon. It has about 70 employees[2] and remains privately held. Among their more notable employees are Mitch Solway, former VP of Marketing of LavaLife, and Sunir Shah of MeatballWiki.
Originally, the product was named 2ndSite, synonymous with the company. In early 2006, the company rebranded the product as FreshBooks with a completely different look and feel based on the then burgeoning Web 2.0 style.
FreshBooks makes extensive use of social media.[3] They were recognized in 2008 as the second best company in Canada using social media by KPMG and Backbone Magazine.[4]
FreshBooks maintains two primary blogs. The most important one is Fresh Thinking, where the company publishes the majority of its corporate news plus a mixture of opinions on entrepreneurship as well as updates on its product and marketing efforts. They also maintain a developer blog to provide updates about their API. They also create secondary blogs on occasion like RoadBurn, which they created during their RV road trip campaign from Future of Web Apps in Miami to SXSW 2007 in Austin, and Brand Murder which they created during their rebranding. Finally, the company are also extensively uses Twitter under their freshbooks account as recognized by Fast Company.[5]
FreshBooks frequently mixes social media with their word of mouth marketing stunts. For instance, during SXSW 2008, they started with the aforementioned RV road trip for which they hired a videographer to post videos on YouTube, and also extensively stunted SXSW itself. Later that year, at the HOW Design Conference, they rented a trade show exhibit space without a trade show booth. Instead, they hired a muralist to paint their booth during the show, which they later turned into a music video.