Interested to know how it all started? This story provides insight into WOT's metamorphisis from two university student's idea into the world's leading community-based, free safe surfing tool that now helps millions of web users stay safe as they search, surf and shop online.

University students Timo Ala-Kleemola and Sami Tolvanen met during their first day at the University of Technology, in Tampere, Finland. As they worked and studied together, thoughts of founding their own company started to formulate and took concrete form while Sami was working on his PhD in Communications Engineering and Timo on his PhD in Signal Processing.

"At that time, I think we had mainly bad ideas and very bad ideas," Timo recollects, "but finally, in October 2005 Sami sent me a long email which explained an idea about a distributed reputation management system. It was clear from the first moment that this was it."

Energized with a great idea, they started to develop the first version of WOT in early November 2005. Timo designed the WOT algorithms. Sami designed the software architecture, database structure and network protocols for the service, as well as implemented the server-side and client software.

Using their own money, the budding entrepreneurs bought used server components from eBay. At the same time, they started seeking funding from VCs and angel investors. It was a frustrating job trying to convince older, experienced business types that a web 2.0 application could make a go of it.

"In 2000, the Internet bubble burst, and subsequently no one believed that an Internet application could be business," said Timo.

"Maybe if it was mobile apps," Sami added, "but no-one in Finland understood Web 2.0."

Meanwhile, a new competing software called SiteAdvisor was sold for millions of dollars.

In 2007, they got their first substantial business investment, so Timo and Sami were able to leave their day jobs to concentrate fully on developing the WOT system. Today, both of them continue their work at WOT to design and develop unique community-powered tools that boost trust on the web. The thriving WOT community has given reputation ratings for millions of websites and has been recommended by PC World, the New York Times, the Kim Komando Show, PC Welt, CNET, and many others.