Tongal

Founding and business model (2007–2009)

Tongal was founded by James DeJulio, Rob Salvatore, and Mark Burrell, who first began developing the business model after a conversation in June 2007. Initially formed in 2009 "in a New York hotel room," Tongal went live and launched its first video project, related to Comedy.com, on May 20, 2009. Tongal hired its first employee in October 2009, and two months later the community had 1,000 members.

As a crowdsourcing company for creative work, Tongal states that its mission is to "bring the world's creative work to the world's creative talent." The founders selected the name Tongal as an anagram of "Galton," referring to the social scientist Sir Francis Galton. He had been highlighted in James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds, which posits that a diverse collection of people is likely to make certain decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts. The opening anecdote relates Galton's surprise when a crowd at market tried to guess the weight of an ox, and their averaged guesses proved accurate. The story would inspire Tongal's ox logo.

Early growth (2010–2013)

The "pitch phase" of Tongal debuted on March 16, 2010, and marked the first "tournament style" project for the company. In September 2010, the company was named to the PepsiCo10 for being one of "the 10 most innovative start ups in social media." Among other projects, in August 2011 the Tongal video "Stuck on Duck Video Project" by David Brashear went viral, and for a time was the tenth most viewed video on Vimeo.

In early 2012, the company launched its 100th project and shortly after, in February 2012 Tongal began a long-term partnership with LEGO. The following month Tongal began working with Pringles and P&G, and in April 2012 Tongal relocated to Marina del Rey in Santa Monica, California. In December 2012, Tongal raised funds from Insight Venture Partners.

Tongal notably aired a Speed Stick commercial on February 3, 2013 during the Super Bowl. Titled "Unattended Laundry" and a part of Speed Stick's "Handle It Campaign," it was listed at No. 12 on a ranking of the top 2013 Super Bowl ads by The Kellogg School of Management. On May 4, 2013, Tongal opened a new headquarters in Santa Monica. In October 2013, a Tongal office was opened in the United Kingdom. A New York City office opened in January 2014.

Growth (2014–2015)

Tongal was listed 205th in the Inc 500 for 2014, which lists the fastest growing companies in the United States. It also won a Gold Medal at the 2014 Edison Awards for Collaboration and Knowledge Management. As of 2014, Tongal handled approximately 200 projects annually. From 2010 to 2015, Tongal's revenue had doubled five times.

Tongal first held the Tongies, an awards ceremony for Tongal community members, in April 2014. As of 2015, Tongal has a global community of more than 70,000 writers, directors and filmmakers in 140+ countries. In 2015, it had seven films in the Sundance Film Festival, and 41 of its 70,000 workers earned salaries of over six figures.

Recent (2020-present)

In 2020, Tongal collaborated with The Lego Group to release Lego World Builder, an online platform where users can share Lego-related ideas, story lines, and worlds.

Tongal projects are open to anyone with a good idea and any filmmakers with the experience to execute it. Typically, each project is posted onto the website and broken up into three phases — "idea," "pitch" and "video," with all stages allowing contribution from anyone.

Idea Phase: In this phase, a business or entity posts a project to Tongal, with a total amount of prize money to be awarded over several phrases. The community then generates ideas with short descriptions, leaving often thousand of ideas for the business to choose from. Finalists typically win a portion of the money, even if their idea is not the final selection.

Pitch Phase: In the next phase, which is intended for community members with a degree of technical skill, directors and production companies pitch production aspects of the winning ideas, for example storyboards and scripts. As of 2015, Tongal states it receives about 50 pitches per project.

Video Phase: After the business selects the production winner and awards money, shooting begins on several projects, with work also put into soundtracks and other aspects of production. From those finished videos, the business selects the winners and distributes the rest of the prize money, with some often relegated to runner-up videos and third-place videos.