# Marybeth Alexander

> Marybeth Alexander is the co-founder and Chief Executive Owl of KnowledgeOwl, a customer-funded knowledge base software company she and Pete Grigg bought out of SurveyGizmo in 2015. Based in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, she brings a customer-support background to product leadership, a 25-hour model for full-time team roles, and B Corp practices. Her stated long-term ambition is to make KnowledgeOwl employee-owned.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO (Chief Executive Owl) at KnowledgeOwl
- **Organizations:** KnowledgeOwl, SurveyGizmo (now Alchemer)
- **Known for:** Co-founded KnowledgeOwl through the 2015 purchase and rebranding of HelpGizmo with Pete Grigg., Led a customer-funded software company without outside investment., Established 25 hours per week as a full-time team role at KnowledgeOwl; her own hours were still approximately 30-40 in her January 2024 account.

## Career timeline

- **2011** — Support manager at SurveyGizmo and part of the internal HelpGizmo startup team.
- **2012** — Her support development team revived HelpGizmo as an internal knowledge base using 20 percent project time.
- **2013** — Became HelpGizmo product manager and hired Pete Grigg as lead developer.
- **2014** — HelpGizmo gained its first paying customer in April; Alexander published essays on support language and documentation.
- **2015** — Bought HelpGizmo with Pete Grigg from SurveyGizmo and rebranded the company as KnowledgeOwl.
- **2020** — Began pursuing B Corp certification and formalizing the company mission, policies and impact tracking.
- **2023** — KnowledgeOwl achieved B Corp certification on December 6 with a B Impact Score of 80.7.
- **2024** — Published a first-person account of the company’s 25-hour full-time model and appeared on The Bootstrapped Founder and Software Spotlight.
- **2025** — Co-taught an information architecture master class and reiterated her employee-ownership ambition in a tenth-anniversary reflection.
- **2026** — Announced Rainforest Trust as KnowledgeOwl’s environmental giving recipient.

## Achievements

- Co-founded KnowledgeOwl through the 2015 purchase and rebranding of HelpGizmo with Pete Grigg.
- Led a customer-funded software company without outside investment.
- Established 25 hours per week as a full-time team role at KnowledgeOwl; her own hours were still approximately 30-40 in her January 2024 account.
- Led KnowledgeOwl through a multi-year process to B Corp certification in December 2023.
- Expanded KO for Good to provide discounts and, where appropriate, free subscriptions to nonprofits, B Corps and purpose-driven organizations.

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Announced Rainforest Trust as the 2026 recipient of KnowledgeOwl’s 1% for the Planet environmental giving; the team votes monthly on projects.
- **2025-11** — Published her ten-year reflection on KnowledgeOwl, reaffirming its customer-funded model and her ambition for employee ownership.

## Links

- Website: https://www.knowledgeowl.com/blog/authors/marybeth-alexander
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marybethalexander

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/marybeth-alexander
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-20