Founded in 2010 and headquartered in San Francisco, Optimizely makes website optimization software for companies. In less than two years, the company’s initial product has passed established players to become the leading A/B and multivariate testing platform in the world, and more than 6,000 enterprises have adopted Optimizely, including Starbucks, Disney and Salesforce.
“The number one reason we chose Amsterdam as our first location in Europe was its proximity to other markets,” said Matt Althauser, General Manager of Optimizely EMEA. “With Schiphol, we’re connected to our customers everywhere in EMEA, and there are daily flights back to our worldwide headquarters in San Francisco. That central location, and the multilingual nature of the people here, means that we can do business with anyone, anywhere.” The presence of the international Internet exchange and a super-fast Internet connection was also a mission-critical reason to be in Amsterdam.
“When we were looking at where we wanted to locate in Europe, the Netherlands was the only country that had a service organization that helped us make that decision,” Althauser added. “We worked with Amsterdam In Business and the NFIA, both in the US and in the Netherlands, and they engaged with us from the beginning. They gave us a tour of the Microsoft campus [near Schiphol], we also toured a server farm, and they even helped us scout potential office locations in Amsterdam.”
Optimizely is growing quickly, and has big plans for its future in the Netherlands. Their Dutch presence has already grown to 20 people in just over a year, and they want to double that number in the coming year. “We have no trouble attracting new employees when we’re based in a great city like Amsterdam!”
