ServiceNow began in 2003 when Fred Luddy, a veteran enterprise software executive who had served as chief technology officer at Peregrine Systems until its collapse in 2002, founded Glidesoft, Inc. in San Diego, California. Luddy's founding vision was to rebuild the IT service management capabilities that had been lost when Peregrine imploded, but to do so using a modern cloud-native architecture rather than the on-premise software model that had dominated enterprise IT. Luddy was the company's only employee until mid-2005, when $2.5 million in venture financing from JMI Equity allowed him to hire five additional people. The company operated under the Glidesoft name until 2006, when it rebranded as Service-Now.com, and achieved its first cash-flow-positive year in 2007 with $13 million in annual revenue. The early product was a simple but elegant cloud-based IT service management platform that allowed IT departments to track incidents, manage service requests, and automate routine tasks through a web interface, eliminating the need for on-premise servers and complex installations. By January 2011, the company had grown to 275 employees across offices in San Diego, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, London, and Frankfurt, and had established a partnership with Accenture that had trained more than 100 consultants on the platform. In April 2011, the company recruited Frank Slootman as chief executive officer, a seasoned enterprise software executive who had previously led Data Domain through its acquisition by EMC. Slootman recognized that ServiceNow had product-market fit in ITSM but needed enterprise-grade sales execution and operational discipline to scale beyond its startup roots. Under Slootman's leadership, the company prepared for its initial public offering, which was executed in June 2012 through a $210 million IPO led by Morgan Stanley, just one month after the same bank took Facebook public. The IPO valued the company at approximately $2.2 billion and provided the capital to accelerate product development and global expansion. Shortly after the IPO, the company relocated its headquarters from San Diego to Santa Clara, California, to be closer to the Silicon Valley talent pool and venture capital ecosystem. The post-IPO years were characterized by rapid product expansion beyond ITSM into IT operations management, IT asset management, and eventually employee workflow, customer workflow, and creator workflow. In April 2017, John Donahoe, former CEO of eBay and Bain & Company, succeeded Slootman as CEO, bringing consumer-industry experience and a relationship-focused sales culture that expanded the company's Fortune 500 penetration. Donahoe's tenure saw revenue grow from $1.9 billion in 2016 to $3.8 billion in 2019, and the company's market capitalization more than tripled. In October 2019, ServiceNow announced that Donahoe would step down to become CEO of Nike, and that Bill McDermott, former CEO of SAP SE, would succeed him. McDermott joined in late 2019 and immediately began repositioning the company for its next phase of growth, emphasizing AI, platform expansion, and the 'Rule of 50' financial metric that combines revenue growth and operating margin. In January 2020, McDermott appointed Gina Mastantuono as chief financial officer, and under their combined leadership the company crossed $10 billion in revenue in 2024, earned a spot on the Fortune 500 list, and grew subscription revenue at a 26% compound annual growth rate from 2020 to 2024. Mastantuono was named President while continuing as CFO in 2025, reflecting her expanded operational role. The company's founding story is therefore a classic Silicon Valley narrative of founder vision, venture capital financing, product-market fit, professional management succession, and continuous reinvention—from ITSM tool to digital workflow platform to AI control tower.