Technology has changed completely since 2000. Customer expectations have, too.
But one thing has stayed almost exactly the same: when someone is stuck online, they just want to say, “Can I show you what I mean?”
Glance was founded on that moment. Twenty-five years later, that is still the moment we care about most.
Before Glance, our founders Rich Baker and Taylor Kew spent years in the videoconferencing world. They heard the same complaint over and over again:
It’s great to see someone’s face.
What I really need is to see what they’re looking at.
Documents. Forms. Diagrams. Product screens. All the real work lived on people’s computers. The tools that existed at the time made it hard to share those screens. They were slow. They required downloads. They broke at the worst moments.
Rich and Taylor wanted something radically simpler:
A way to show your screen instantly
With no downloads or setup
That “just works” the first time, every time
Taylor would say, “I just want my 9 AM meeting to start at 9 AM.”
Rich would add, “There should be just one click.”
That obsession with removing every extra step became Glance’s DNA.
They bootstrapped the company from an attic, scavenged used hardware and mismatched desks, and built a customer-funded business around a single promise: simple, secure, always works.
Simplicity as a discipline, not a feature
Inside those early offices, simplicity wasn’t a buzzword. It was a daily practice.
Rich, as the technical founder, was famous for “editing out” steps. Buttons disappeared. Options were simplified. The question was always:
“How do we remove one more decision for the user?”
That mindset led to one of Glance’s quiet but important inventions: the join button.
Instead of forcing customers or agents to choose between tools (“Do I start screen share? Cobrowse? Video?”), the join button does the work. It detects where the user is and invokes the right Glance capability behind the scenes.
To the person clicking, it feels incredibly simple:
Click one button
Get the right kind of help
No tech decisions, no guesswork
That is the heart of our product philosophy: Reduce friction. Elevate the human. Let the technology fade into the background.
Pivotal moments, same core idea
Over 25 years, Glance has evolved a lot.
Two inflection points stand out.
When a major global brand set out to recreate the feeling of an in-store experience online, they invited Glance into the journey. Internally, their initiative focused on keeping humans relevant in digital channels.
Working together pushed Glance to raise the bar on reliability, security, and scale. It also reinforced something our founders believed from the beginning:
The goal isn’t to automate people out.
The goal is to make it easier for people to connect when it matters.
That collaboration helped define Glance’s role in the world: a way to make complex digital journeys feel as clear as a face-to-face conversation.
In the early days, Glance ran on servers we racked ourselves. Mail servers, DNS, the whole thing. It was scrappy and hands-on.
Then one incident made the team ask a hard question: “What if we could do this in a way that’s more resilient for our customers?”
That led to a bold move: migrating operations into the cloud. The team rebuilt Glance’s infrastructure so it could “live anywhere,” no longer tied to physical equipment in a single place.
From the outside, customers didn’t see a big change. That was the point.
Behind the scenes, the move gave Glance the reliability and flexibility needed to support mission-critical interactions around the world. On the surface, Glance stayed what it had always been: a simple, reliable way to connect.
The story of Glance is a story of technology. It’s also very much a story of people.
Rich and Taylor created a culture that mixed frugality with generosity in a very human way. They scavenged furniture from auctions and shuttered dot-com offices so they could invest more in the product. At the same time, they were famous for overdoing it on celebrations and gifts. Lobster rolls “with plenty of extras.” Early iPhones for every employee. Thoughtful, gadget-lover holiday gifts year after year.
Those details mattered, because they reflected a belief that still shapes Glance: When people feel taken care of, they do their best work. When customers feel taken care of, they stay.
Both founders are no longer with us, but their principles still show up every day in how we design, collaborate, and support our customers.
Glance started as a fast, no-download way to share your screen.
Today, the platform powers Guided CX for some of the world’s most trusted brands:
Cobrowse that lets agents see a customer’s browser or app in real time, without exposing sensitive data
Mobile app cobrowse for the customers who now live on their phones
Integrated video that brings empathy and reassurance into high-stakes digital moments
Smart escalation that uses signals and context to connect customers to the right human expert at the right time
Under the hood, Glance is evolving into an API-first, developer-friendly platform. In plain language, that means:
It’s easier for product and engineering teams to embed Glance directly into their own apps and journeys
Glance becomes a piece of CX “infrastructure,” not another heavy implementation that slows projects down
Teams can combine Glance’s visual collaboration tools with their own AI and automation in a way that feels seamless to the customer
One analogy we like: Glance is becoming “flour” for CX.
You can mix it with your CRM, your contact center platform, your AI tools, and your own digital journeys to “bake” the exact guided experiences your customers need.
But no matter how sophisticated the recipe gets, the taste test is simple: Did this make it easier for a human to get help?
Why simplicity and reduced friction matter more than ever
Customer experience today is more complex than our founders could have imagined - Multiple devices and channels, self-service portals, apps, bots, and AI agents, and enterprise stacks that span dozens of systems.
Yet the human need at the center has not changed. When people get stuck, they want a fast path to a real person - someone who can actually see what they see. They want help that feels effortless, not like a second job.
That’s why Glance’s founding idea, “If I could simply show you what I’m trying to tell you,” still feels so relevant.
It’s also why we keep coming back to the same core principles:
Keep it simple. One click, not five. One join button, not a menu of tools.
Remove friction. Fewer logins, fewer handoffs, fewer places where customers have to repeat themselves.
Respect people’s time and trust. Secure, privacy-aware experiences that “just work,” especially when the stakes are high.
Elevate the human. Use AI and automation to clear the path, so people can focus on connection and resolution.
As we look to the future, we’re excited about what AI can do in customer experience.
We’re just as clear about what it can’t replace.
Humans are still the ones who provide reassurance, context, and real problem solving in the moments that matter most. Our job at Glance is to make it incredibly easy for those humans to show up, see what the customer sees, and solve things together.
That was true in a Winchester attic in 2000. It’s true in Fortune 500 contact centers today. And it will be true in whatever comes next.
If you’re rethinking how to balance automation and human connection in your digital journeys, we’d love to share what we have learned over 25 years of guided CX.
Visit glance.cx to see how Glance can help you reduce friction, keep things simple, and keep people connected in the moments that matter most.