Urchin Software Corporation

Urchin Software Corporation was a San Diego, California based web analytics company, founded by Paul Muret and Scott Crosby in December, 1995. In its original incarnation, the company was called Web Depot, and built/hosted websites for various mostly San Diego companies, including the two largest private employers in the area Sharp Healthcare and Solar Turbines.

In 1997, Brett Crosby and Jack Ancone were brought in as partners and the company was essentially re-founded as a software concern. That year it became UWD, Inc., a California "C" corporation, but operated as Quantified Web Systems Inc., later Quantified Systems Inc.

Scott Crosby, Jack Ancone, Brett Crosby, Paul Muret

In 1998, the four principals of the company decided to jettison the hosting and design elements of the business and focus solely on the Urchin software, which had become fairly popular for its speed and efficiency at processing large web server log files. At that time, Honda Motor Co. had standardized on it, and Earthlink Corp. had just become a customer. Quantified then took a round of angel funding from various family members, a small VC called Green Thumb Ventures, and friends. The funding round came to approximately $1 million.

In the late 90s and early 00s, Quantified grew rapidly on the strength of both the software and large contracts secured by Ancone and B. Crosby. Major customers included Earthlink, Verio, Cable & Wireless, Rackspace, and the ill-fated Winstar (among others). An office was opened in Tokyo and employment was approximately 40 total.

In 2001, the company prepared to take on its A-series venture capital round, which was to be led by InnoCal Ventures and JMI Ventures (John Moores' VC company). All parties agreed in principle to the deal, and a term sheet was signed. However, the September 11 attacks and the meltdown of Peregrine Systems (a John Moores company) caused the funding to collapse. Quantified was forced to lay off approximately 15 employees, close the Tokyo office, and take out a loan from the original investors.

In 2002, the principals decided to revamp all business models and develop and in-house CRM system to keep track of things much more tightly. The Site License Model (SLM), which entailed a flat montly rate of $5000 per physical datacenter, was launched, and many large hosting companies were enlisted over the next year. Money was left on the table, but stability was achieved. At the same time, the sales force was streamlined, base salaries cut, and a strong incentive plan enacted. Sales steadily rose through spring 2005 (when it was acquired).

In 2003, the company changed its name to Urchin Software Corporation ("Urchin"), after the "Quantified" name failed to catch on meaningfully.

In 2004, the company repaid its angel investors the money borrowed in 2001, and became essentially debt-free. Urchin was profitable for its remaining time as an independent entity.

Paul Botto, Scott Crosby, Brett Crosby, 2004 trade show

In August 2004 at the Search Engine Strategies trade show in San Jose, Urchin was approached by representatives of Google Inc. about a possible partnership. Urchin was acquired in April 2005.

Approximately 6 months after the acquisition, the Urchin On Demand (hosted) version of the product was renamed Google Analytics and re-launched on Google infrastructure. The price was cut to zero. Due to strong demand, the service experienced overloading and new accounts were restricted for a number of months. After extensive re-engineering, the service was again opened to the public and is currently the most widely used hosted web analytics system.

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Paul Botto, Scott Crosby, Brett Crosby, 2004 trade show

Principals and key personnel:

• Paul Muret (co-founder): Paul wrote the first version of the Urchin software in 1997 and was Chief Executive Officer of the company. He is now an engineering director for Google.
• Scott Crosby (co-founder): Scott was President and later VP of Sales. He is now an Enterprise Business Development Manager at Google.
• Jack Ancone (co-founder): Jack was VP of Sales, then later VP of Business Development. He is now a Business Development Manager at Google.
• Brett Crosby (co-founder): Brett was VP of Marketing. He is now a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Google.
• Jason Senn: Jason was Partner Manager and Head of Indirect Sales. He is now Enterprise Channel Development Manager, Analytics, at Google.
• Paul Botto: Paul was Sales Team Lead. He is now a Direct Sales Manager for Google.
• Hui-Sok "Nathan" Moon: Nathan was Engineering Lead. He is now a Software Engineer at Google.
• Rolf Schreiber: Rolf was Chief Integration Engineer. He is now a Software Engineer at Google.
• Jonathon Vance: Jonathon was co-Engineering Lead. He is now a Staff Software Engineer at Google.