Every company knows its own web traffic. Similarweb sold a look at everyone else's. Its software estimated visits to millions of websites and apps, then showed where the visitors came from and where they went next. Marketers, salespeople, and investors used it to size up rivals. When the Tel Aviv company went public in May 2021, the pandemic had pushed more of life onto screens than ever.

Reading the Whole Web

Or Offer founded the company in 2009 and has run it since. Benjamin Seror joined as a co-founder and chief product officer. Similarweb launched its platform in 2013. The bet was that public digital signals, gathered at huge scale, could estimate any site's traffic. Businesses usually saw only their own numbers. Similarweb sold them a view of the market, priced as a subscription.

A Flat First Day

Similarweb priced its offering at $22 a share on May 11, 2021, above its planned range, and raised $176 million. Offer sold 500,000 of his own shares in the deal. The stock finished its first day on the New York Stock Exchange about where it started. Similarweb kept adding tools for sales teams and investors. It still trades on the NYSE as SMWB.

Cover: Two Chinese Women Examining Thread and a Spider’s Web in a Box, from the series "Diptych for the Drum Group", Yashima Gakutei. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a spider's web (the web, studied).