May 20th is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! To celebrate, we are sharing Olark’s story: how we went from finding a couple of accessibility issues in our bug tracker to developing a WCAG 2.0 …

This post is the fourth in our 10 year anniversary series. Want to catch up? Read the series intro, Olark’s origin story, and our road to a co-created culture. A few years after graduating from YCombinator, Olark walked away from what could potentially have been a very lucrative acquisition offer. …

In 2013, four years after co-founding Olark, I was waiting for some friends to order at a Starbucks in Mumbai when a woman approached me and commented on my Virginia Tech t-shirt. I was jet-lagged, but energized — being in a new place always gives me energy — and eager…

I’ll never forget the second day of my first remote job. The first day was the usual — signing all the things, attending all the things, logging into all the things. But when the second day arrived, I had no idea what to do. I was used to an office…

This post is the third in our 10 year anniversary series. Want to catch up? Read the series intro and Olark’s origin story. Early days: “Who used my toothbrush?!” When Olark joined YCombinator in the fall of 2009, our original co-founders moved in together in Mountain View, California. We were four co-founders, one spouse, and two…

Most of us have had at least one bad hiring experience — a recruiter who got too aggressive (or, conversely, ghosted), an interviewer who showed up unprepared, or even an unpleasant post-hire moment when we realized the job wasn’t what we’d been led to believe. But as someone who’s been…

By Ben Congleton This post is the second in our “From 0 to 10” anniversary series. You can read the series introduction here. As we celebrate Olark’s 10-year anniversary this month, I’ve found myself retelling our origin story more and more frequently. I live in the heart of Silicon Valley…

By Matt Pizzimenti and Ben Congleton This month, Olark turns 10! It’s hard to believe that a business we started as a post-college side project has grown into a 30+ person company. …

About two years ago, a member of Olark’s customer service team decided to run an experiment. Sarah Betts spent three months responding to chats under three different names and avatars — first as “Samuel”, featuring a male profile photo, then as “Sam”, featuring a bit of androgynous clipart, and finally…