MarkMonitor, Inc. is a company that provides Internet access outside the firewall security and Internet brand protection services.[1] The company was founded in 1998 in Boise, Idaho, and is currently headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.[2] Companies that use MarkMonitor's services include Facebook,[3] Google, and the Wikimedia Foundation.[4] The company was the 43rd largest domain name registrar in terms of number of registered domains, in 2007.[5]
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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.
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.
MarkMonitor’s board members include: Salim; Dave Barrett, general partner, Polaris Venture Partners; Stephen J. Harrick, managing director and partner, Institutional Venture Partners; Jim Sayre, president, Cargill Ventures; and Warren Weiss, general partner, Foundation Capital. 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.
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.