eGain is one of the few companies from the 1999 class still trading on Nasdaq, with its founder still in charge. It started with a simple problem. Customers had begun emailing companies in huge numbers, and most companies had no way to answer. eGain built software to sort, route and reply to that flood. When it filed to go public in the fall of 1999, companies selling online were discovering that every sale brought questions.

Sorting the Inbox

Ashu Roy and Gunjan Sinha founded eGain in 1997. They bet that customer service would move from the phone to digital channels, and that companies would need tools to handle it at scale. eGain's software read incoming messages and sent each one to the right agent. It suggested answers from a shared knowledge base, so service teams could answer more questions faster.

A Founder Still in Charge

eGain priced at $12 a share in September 1999. It rose sharply during the boom and fell hard in the crash. Unlike most of its class, it stayed independent and kept its founder in charge. It moved toward cloud software and knowledge management for customer service. More than two decades after its offering, eGain still trades on Nasdaq under the ticker EGAN.

Cover: Stacks of Wheat (End of Day, Autumn), Claude Monet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for wheat stacks at harvest (gain, gathered in).