Showing a presentation to colleagues in another city once meant a plane ticket or a fuzzy phone call. WebEx let people join a meeting in a web browser and see the same screen. Subrah Iyar and Min Zhu founded it in 1995. It ran the service on its own global network and sold it by subscription. WebEx went public in July 2000 as the dot-com market wobbled, and its product kept selling.

Meetings Sold by Subscription

WebEx bet that companies would pay to meet online, and that the service should be hosted instead of installed. That made it an early software-as-a-service business. It built its own network to keep meetings fast and reliable. Sales teams were early adopters, giving demos to customers far away. After the September 11 attacks, many businesses cut back on travel, and demand for online meetings grew quickly.

Acquired by the Network

WebEx priced its IPO at $14 a share in July 2000 and listed on Nasdaq. It turned profitable and became the leading name in web conferencing. In 2007 Cisco bought WebEx for about $3.2 billion. Under Cisco, Webex became the core of its collaboration business. Its use surged during the pandemic of 2020, and the product name is still in wide use.

Cover: A Midnight Modern Conversation, William Hogarth. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a gathering around a table.