Our story

We used to run a creative agency.

And like many people with experience in marketing or communications, we found that no matter how much branded content we produced, it was difficult to get noticed.

If you ask most people, they’ll say that the problem is content overload. We kept hearing that the average Joe is just too busy and doesn’t have time to read anymore.

But that’s not the story that we saw.

We saw that average people were spending more time gobbling up content than ever before. At home, on the train, at work, even on the toilet.

The problem wasn’t that there was too much content, the problem was that content wasn’t being designed for the modern content consumer!

Today, people need content to be snackable. They need it to be visual. And most importantly, they need to be able to consume it when, where and on whatever device they prefer.

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!

After launching, we scored our first two clients in the first week. Fast forward to today, and we’ve amassed more than 1,300 clients in 40+ countries, and have offices in Amsterdam, London and New York.

We now have an amazing team of more than 100 dedicated people.

The success we’ve seen proves our initial belief was accurate: Today’s audiences want to read exceptional content more than ever — it's just that they need it to be tailored to their content consumption habits.

And we believe brands should be able to meet this need.

Foleon exists to untether brands from the constraints of traditional formats and empower them to produce concise, visually immersive content experiences that are universally accessible.

The powerful and easy-to-use platform we developed (and are still improving) allows anyone to quickly create media-rich HTML5-based content that really stands out. So, that’s our story... But it's not over yet.

Our big hairy audacious goal is that by 2030 we will have reached 10% of the world's population with a Foleon. And we're working hard, together with our customers, to achieve this!

Want to be part of the story? Start creating your first Foleon today!