MindTouch

Steve and Aaron met at the Advanced Systems Research Team at Microsoft. Steve was perplexed by the persistent lack of innovation around knowledge documentation systems. To Aaron, it seemed that every company was developing knowledge silos in every department. These silos were preventing companies and their customers from finding the answers they need to be successful. They realized that organizati

ons were being held back by bad software. People were struggling with PDFs that were not mobile-friendly, expensive federated search systems that often did not work, and knowledge base systems that could not scale to the organizational need. At the same time, they recognized that people do not want to be guided, forced, or supported—they want the freedom to self-serve knowledge on demand. Together they designed an innovative, scalable knowledge system to meet certain requirements:
- Deploy quickly with a turnkey setup
- Customizable without costly services engagements
- Extend into CRM software, websites, and product interfaces
- Use machine learning to continually improve every time it is used

It was time to revolutionize documentation. It was time to allow users to self-serve expert knowledge on demand.