Interactive Intelligence

In October 1994, a doctor and serial software entrepreneur named Donald E. Brown founded Interactive Intelligence in Indianapolis, Indiana. Having already successfully built and sold two other software companies, Brown had a vision for a new kind of business communication. The goal was to create an all-in-one software suite for customer engagement, a novel idea at the time. The company got to work, and by 1997, it was first to market with its integrated customer engagement software. This platform, called the Interaction Center Platform, unified various communication channels for call centers and businesses. The timing was perfect. In September 1999, at the height of the dot-com bubble, Interactive Intelligence went public, raising $29 million in its IPO. The company continued to grow, shifting its focus toward cloud-based solutions for contact centers in 2007. This pivot kept the company at the forefront of the industry. The journey reached its final destination in December 2016, when competitor Genesys acquired Interactive Intelligence for $1.4 billion. The acquisition marked the largest in Indiana's tech scene in years and integrated Interactive's products into the Genesys portfolio, closing a more than two-decade chapter of innovation.