“People who solve problems are happier” - Jim McKelvey

The History and Story of Mira

In 1989, Jim McKelvey and a team of Washington University software engineers founded Mira in St. Louis, MO. In 1992, Mira released one of the first commercial document imaging systems for PC’s, Look™. Unable to compete with Adobe® Acrobat, Mira soon pivoted to document imaging and retrieval to carve out a successful niche, publishing enhanced tradeshow directories on CD-ROMs and later to USBs. 

With the World Wide Web explosion in the 1990’s, Mira shifted from tradeshow content to conference publishing, and in 1996 released one of the first commercial systems for online abstract submission management and peer review.

Our initial product was developed in part by our summer intern Jack Dorsey, who later went on to co-found Twitter. More recently, Jim partnered with Jack again to co-found Square, Inc., the mobile electronic payment company. 

In 2011 John Berglund, Jim’s business partner and minority shareholder, took over running and modernizing the company. While Mira is still privately held by Jim McKelvey and John Berglund, they have assembled an excellent team to run the day-to-day operations, while Jim and John are off working on other projects.

Mira continues to focus on providing innovative software tools and expert services to help organizations, associations, and societies manage their abstract management process and other database management needs.

The Team