So in 2008, with this narrative in mind, we gathered a team of developers and designers to try something new.
Using Flash and ActionScript (hey, don’t judge us), we began creating our first fully custom “digital publications” — responsive content pieces that were engaging, interactive and visually immersive, no matter what device a reader used.
And people loved them.
Companies started ditching PDFs and asking us to produce responsive publications for everything from newsletters to annual reports; from staff magazines to white papers to product catalogs. They wanted them for things we didn’t initially envision.
There was only one problem.
It wasn’t really sustainable. These custom publications were extremely labor intensive. And on top of that, the death of Flash was already on the horizon.
We needed — no, the world needed a permanent solution. A platform that would enable marketers and communications professionals to create these things in an afternoon, without needing a team of developers and designers.
Because nothing like this existed, Daan our CEO, and Joost (his name rhymes with toast), our CTO, decided they would build the platform themselves. And in 2013, Foleon was born (then called Instant Magazine)!
We set out to democratize the production of top-notch web content so that anyone could create media-rich HTML5-based sales and marketing collateral without needing any technical expertise.
And it worked!