Learn how Rivet Got Its Name >
Every big vision starts with a good story. The story of Rivet gives context and provides perspective to the work we do every day on behalf of our customers.
An XBRL Dream Team
Mike Rohan, an entrepreneurial – minded CPA with a background in Big 4 business systems consulting, who also happened to be able to write software, started a financial reporting software company in the late-90s. He does this so well, that he ends up selling the company within 2 years to Microsoft. He then takes a break and eventually teams up with his Principle Architect from this company, Emily Huang, who wrote code for OLAP, XML-based reporting and led development efforts in ERP integrations, so Emily knows data and Emily loves data.
Both Mike and Emily knew what XBRL could do and were well-positioned to make it happen. Make what happen, you ask?
Make the world a better place
They wanted to improve the way companies, investors, government agencies and other organizations create and consume financial data. They believed if data was more accessible and more transparent that better decisions would be made and the world would be a better place.
So they started Rivet in 2002. From the start, the SEC looked to Rivet. Rivet built the viewers for the SEC and was an important component of the SEC’s 2006 XBRL voluntary program – 40% of the public companies who participated used Rivet’s flagship, desk-top XBRL product, Dragon Tag to file. Mike and Emily decided they wanted to share what they knew and made Dragon Tag available by open sourcing it. Because of this, a majority of XBRL products in the market today were built using Dragon Tag.
Center of an evolving market
As the XBRL mandate became a reality in 2009, 25% of the Fortune 500 companies filed using Rivet’s new SaaS-based financial reporting platform – Crossfire. The word was out, but at the time, the most effective way to connect with the large public company market was through their relationships with their financial printers.
In the meantime, Rivet had attracted the attention of the world’s largest financial printer. Rivet partnered with this printer and completed more XBRL filings than any other software on the market in 2010 – 2011. But, Mike and Emily still had the vision that went beyond the mandate – one that started and ended with customer empowerment.
Return to the Vision: The Revolution Continues
Rivet has always been a software company, and in the end, the financial printer model had too many layers that limited the customer-centric, forward-thinking, data-driven minds of Rivet. Within the past year, Rivet has returned to their software roots and to their vision of improving the way companies create and consume their data. The revolution continues . . .
Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, the firm employs the most experienced XBRL and financial reporting staff in the industry. Rivet was honored in 2011 and 2012 as an Inc. 500 company.