LiveOps History
Founding team
In the beginning ...
The promise of the Internet as it became more available in the 90s was that it would change the way we live and work. Living up to the first part of the promise, it definitely changed the way we lived: we chatted with people from around the world, enjoyed shopping around the clock, and finally learned the real lyrics to R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as we Know It.” But as far as it changing the way we worked? Sure, people could check email from home when necessary, but we still had to get in the car every morning and drive to the office. But two guys in south Florida saw a way that they could truly leverage the power of the Internet to not only change the way people worked, but to create a new and profitable business model in one of the world’s largest labor intensive markets: the call center.
Seeing that the Internet could match call center managers with an infinite number of qualified workers – regardless of location - Steve Doumar and Doug Feirstein knew they could create an unlimited number of business opportunities for people wanting to work from home. In 2000, they founded LiveOps in Fort Lauderdale, FL., as a solely home agent call center. Using traditional call center technology to route their calls, LiveOps had to solve previously unknown problems such as how to limit background noise, schedule remote workers, and how to maintain agent quality when they couldn’t see the agents. And they did it better than anyone else, surpassing the quality of brick and mortar centers.
On the other side of the country, Bill Trenchard and Wendell Brown founded CallCast in Palo Alto, CA. in 2001 and raised money from a very supportive group of angel investors and advisors. In early 2002, Jim Everingham joined as the founding VP of Engineering and quickly assembled a small group of highly skilled engineering veterans. At CallCast, the engineering team was developing an advanced, flexible Web-based routing system using VoIP to efficiently connect people. Like LiveOps, location was irrelevant. CallCast had a great technology backbone, but was still missing its first killer application. Later in 2002, new CallCast team member Patrick McKenna discovered LiveOps – a great company with a solid business model, but without it’s own technology. The two companies soon merged under the name LiveOps, and located headquarters in Palo Alto.
LiveOps concentrated on using the Internet to build a business, enabling people across the country to establish their own home-based businesses and provide call center services to LiveOps’ clients. With no location or traditional work-schedule restraints, LiveOps learned it could quickly and easily scale to handle spiky and unpredictable call volume. The ability to scale made it a perfect fit for the direct response industry – an ever-changing market that requires constant flexibility and adjustment. In just 5 years LiveOps became the undisputed market leader for outsource call centers in the Direct Response market. In the past three years the company has aggressively expanded into the enterprise market with a marquee list of customers in insurance, financial services and retail industries.
LiveOps has become an call center solution that is changing the way the world works. With strong roots in both entrepreneurship and engineering, it has become a unique blend of a vibrant online agent community and a technology platform. LiveOps' unique background helps to make it the most comprehensive and flexible call center solution, period.
LiveOps Founders
Steve Doumar, Founder
Steve has more than 16 years of experience as the owner and publisher of Premier Bride, the largest nationally distributed, local-content wedding magazine in the country. Founded in 1987 with a focus on a single market, Premier Bride editions are the established bridal guidebook in more than 113 major metropolitan markets. In addition to managing this publishing business, Steve developed and marketed a unique online wedding portal, Blissbridal.com, which combines the functional benefits of the Internet with instant real-world customer service capabilities.
Douglas Feirstein, Founder
As a founder of LiveOps, Mr. Feirstein has been involved with LiveOps since March 2000. From March 2000 to January 2004, Mr. Feirstein was President and Chief Executive Officer of LiveOps. Prior to LiveOps, he was involved in developing call center operations and technologies for catalog and electronic retailing organizations. He holds a Bachelors degree in Finance from the University of Florida.