One of the challenges with creating something that’s truly new and innovative in a market is the anxiety you inevitably feel as you wonder whether the market itself is ready for your solution. But when you have really smart people who see an opportunity for technology to solve a real problem in a totally new way, sometimes you take a leap of faith that the market will respond and then a really interesting adventure will begin.
And so, it was extremely gratifying to see the announcement yesterday that the analyst firm IDC has included FirstRain in its 2011 list of “Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch.” FirstRain was one of 6 companies selected, and one of just two specifically focused on the discipline of Cloud-Based Analytics. According to IDC, this designation is given to companies recognized by their analysts as “driving innovation in business analytics.”
As an analytics software firm whose patented technology solves the challenge of delivering relevant, Business Web content to professionals in Sales, Marketing, Competitive Intelligence and other key roles, this recognition by IDC is yet another validation of the importance of the problem we’re helping our customers solve, and it’s terrific to see a leading analyst firm like IDC recognize the role FirstRain is playing. We’ve seen it in the great customers we’re signing every day, with the amazing product feedback we hear from those customers, and now we’re hearing from the analyst community too. It looks like this adventure is getting bigger!
We announced the FirstRain iPad app yesterday. Our new iPad app marries the elegance of the iPad with the precision of FirstRain’s business Web. It’s visual business monitoring – slick, fast, cool, beautiful, powerful – all the adjectives we can’t use in a press release but want to say. I truly love it and it’s now how I stay on top of my customers, our industry and everything else business wise that I need to know in a few minutes a day.
If you are in sales, marketing or purchasing, or you are a partner in a law firm, or a librarian, or a MI or CI professional, you are going to want a FirstRain subscription and this app. You are missing developments in your market, your customers, your vendors TODAY that you can now see real-time with the gentle swipe of a finger.
One of the more fascinating developments in our rapidly evolving financial markets is the shift that’s beginning to occur as the Baby Boom Generation—whose oldest members turn 65 this year—approaches and enters retirement. And while this event raises many societal challenges, ranging from the increased load on our health care system to the solvency of our social entitlement programs, it’s equally interesting to consider those folks who are recognizing the emerging needs and opportunities presented, and coming up with innovative ways to fill that need. And it’s a big need.
An interesting article last week from Canada’s Financial post articulates well the big demographics changes to come for countries like the U.S. And Canada, and the potential impact and opportunity for financial service providers:
“As you assess the stock holdings in your portfolio this fall, consider this: According to recent population projections, the proportion of seniors in Canada could nearly double in the next 25 years, while the proportion of children is expected to continue falling. If these demographic changes occur, it will have a major impact on the Canadian economy, which in turn will impact your investment portfolio…Financial service providers, especially wealth and asset management companies, also stand to benefit as an enormous amount of wealth is controlled by the Boomer generation. Institutions that cater to the specific needs of older clients will capitalize on this growing segment.”
One great example of a firm actively adapting to meet this opportunity is Fidelity Investments, who announced this week the launch of a greatly expanded set of market research and education tools focused specifically on helping Baby Boomers and others learn about and select fixed-income market investments. It’s a smart move, and we at FirstRain were very pleased that our technology was selected as one of the top tools available in the new Fidelity fixed income research suite. As their announcement notes, Fidelity users will be able to leverage a custom FirstRain implementation that provides, “trends analysis on the fixed income markets, so investors can see what fixed income topics are being discussed online and with what frequency. The content is categorized and investors can drill down into subcategories that change daily, depending on what is being discussed online.”
It’s a powerful tool that builds on the quite successful and popular FirstRain ‘Hot Topics on the Web’ tool that Fidelity users have already been using on the Fidelity.com Stock Research Center since 2009 (we’re told FirstRain hot topics are very popular on the page).
FirstRain ‘Hot Topics on the Web’ on Fidelity.com’s Stock Research Center
And the reason, we believe, it’s been so successful is because of the incredibly targeted, unique and interesting content we’re able to uncover from the business Web. Because, at our heart, we’re an analytics software company which applies powerful technology to uncover hard-to-find business content: our customers consistently tell us they find content on FirstRain that they wouldn’t otherwise find or would take them a great deal of advanced searching.
Fidelity has been a fantastic partner to work with over the last two years, and we’re very much looking forward to our expanded relationship and tackling these new challenges—and the opportunities they now present!
We’re all very excited here at FirstRain, as we’ve just seen the product review of FirstRain published this month by VIP Reports and (in a slightly more condensed form) in the August 2011 edition of VIP Magazine. VIP Reports aim to provide product and vendor reviews of premium content products. We were delighted to have VIP’s report author Perrin Kerravala, Senior Librarian at Export Development Canada, analyze FirstRain and share an inside look into how effectively our solution can help deliver The Business Web to busy professionals. The Report walks readers through the basic workings of the product and offers a detailed product review (including screenshots and a step-by-step guide).
In short, it’s a great review, and the VIP Report highlights a number of the attributes that make FirstRain such an asset to businesses:
• “FirstRain is primarily a current awareness research tool that makes free, relevant web content easy to find.” (Emphasis theirs)
• “[FirstRain] Vastly increases precision when searching for quality business information on the internet, largely thanks to the FirstRain Business Web taxonomic system.”
• “FirstRain enables users to build sophisticated Monitors very quickly using a three-step process.”
• “Numerous mobile and enterprise integration options allow organisations to choose the method of content delivery that works best for them.”
• “[FirstRain] is suitable for users at all levels of research expertise—novice to expert searchers. The product’s customisable monitoring functions and content delivery options make it a good option for busy C-Level executives.”
A really positive review like this one provides just one more validation that FirstRain is a solution that can truly meet the needs of sales, marketing, legal, CI, research and many other professionals who need to find information to make business decisions. For example, selling and rolling out a solution is one challenge, but delivering a solution that people actually find value in and continue to use on a daily basis is quite another. Fortunately, we know how good the active usage by our customers of FirstRain actually is, but it’s wonderful to see this strongly supported, as when Ms. Kerravala suggests, “… FirstRain is effective and user friendly—ensuring that users will come back to it, time and again.”
Just one more exciting day at FirstRain! To see the full report, visit FreePint at: http://firstra.in/vipfirstrain
It’s another great day at FirstRain today – I’m delighted to announce that FirstRain has raised 6.4MM in new funding led by Oak Investment Partners.
This new round is just the latest in a series of exciting developments for us – you may have seen our latest release which is getting rave responses from our customers, and we’re signing up major new enterprise deployments and hiring aggressively in both sales and R&D. Interested in a job? – see our careers page.
This new capital is all about our growth trajectory: growing the sales team and investing significantly in product development. So watch this space as we continue to strive to bring the best business monitoring solutions to all our valued customers.
One of the most rewarding aspects of being a CEO is when you can see the hard work put in by you and your team really paying off.
For the last several weeks, everyone here at FirstRain has been putting in long hours in order to launch the next phase of FirstRain intelligence solutions to market, and so now I am extremely delighted to announce the release of the third generation of the FirstRain Web Application and our new FirstRain mobile apps for iPhone and Android (now available in the iTunes App Store and the Android Marketplace) today.
This important new release represents the third major step forward in FirstRain solution development, and provides our customers a truly unique and effective, role-based way of monitoring the critical developments impacting their business, industry, customers or competitors. In addition to these workflow enhancements and the new mobile apps, we’ve also now optimized FirstRain for use on tablet devices, all of which means that critical business intelligence can now be delivered to any place or time our customers most need to see it: whether it’s over their morning coffee, at their desk, on their company portal or out on the road.
The product also has also had a bit of a make-over, with a fresh-new look and a streamlined design which our non-professional-searcher customers will find even easier to navigate—making it simple to get in, find what you need, and get on with your work.
All in all, we think it’s a big step forward in an already great product, and seeing this really sharp new iteration of FirstRain come to life has been extremely gratifying for me and everyone involved. And for all of you who are FirstRain customers, try out the new role-based monitor setup, download the new mobile apps, and please, let us know what you think!
Day 1 iPad2 Winner: Rachel Eichen, Library Intern, Consumer Electronics Association (with FirstRain VP of Marketing, Ryan Warren)
FirstRain was an SLA newbie this year, attending the Special Libraries Association conference for the first time at this year’s annual gathering in Philadelphia, June 12-14. And although it was our first time, SLA’s attendees were gentle with us. 
We received an incredibly warm welcome and a hugely positive response to the FirstRain solution suite, meeting many wonderful people from the SLA community who visited our Info-Expo booth, who joined us for our Philadelphia-themed Cheesesteak and Beer cocktail parties, and who attended the SLA Midwest Chapter Event that we sponsored.
Overall, it was a wonderful SLA, and made even brighter by the excited winners of the three iPad2s given away by FirstRain to SLA attendees. Thanks for the warm reception everyone, we’re looking forward to seeing you all again soon!
Day 2 iPad2 Winner: Michelle Bing, Library Director, Miller-Motte Technical College (with FirstRain Sales Executive, Thomas Lai)
Day 3 iPad2 Winner: Janet Holly, Reference Librarian, Virginia Military Institute
One challenge of being an information solution that’s been designed from the ground-up to be easily used by business professionals who are not professional researchers, is the mistaken assumption that corporate libraries wouldn’t be interested in FirstRain.
So it’s always gratifying, then, when yet another customer comes along that helps us dispel this myth. We’re very happy to announce today that leading international commercial law firm, Bird & Bird, has selected FirstRain. And once again, it’s Bird & Bird’s Library and Information Services team that selected FirstRain as the solution to provide business monitoring to their organization, and assist with the dissemination of that intelligence across the firm.
Bird & Bird has integrated FirstRain into both their ad hoc research process, and is used to provide ongoing updates to their firm’s fee earners. FirstRain was selected, as Cecilia Cheung, Head of Library at Bird & Bird noted “In order to to give Bird & Bird Fee Earners competitive advantage …”.
We know that many info pros love FirstRain because of our unique and patented Business Web Graph(TM). Better than a conventional, linear taxonomy, FirstRain’s Business Web Graph takes traditionally hierarchical concepts such as sectors, industries and companies, and then creates live interconnections between them using our unique Business Lines and Dynamic Topics. The result is a dynamic graph of linked Business Web concepts we apply to all of our content–and continuously update based on the living Web. It’s the industry’s best collection of business topics, and is one of the many reasons FirstRain is the market leader in filtering out the noise of the consumer Web and delivering your users only highly relevant Business Web content.
We’re very excited to be working with the Library at Bird & Bird, and can’t wait for the next myth-busting customer to come along!
By the way, for those of you who will be at next week’s Special Libraries Association 2011 Conference in Philadelphia, stop by and see us at Booth 540! We’ll be giving away an iPad every day, hosting Beer & Cheesesteak cocktail parties, and our own Nima Niakan will be leading a session on developing effective Sales & Marketing triggers. Hope to see you there!
I’ve mentioned before what an exciting time it is to be a part of FirstRain. We’re building momentum every day as our fantastic sales team helps more and more customers in Marketing and Sales roles use FirstRain to monitor and act on the critical events that impact their business, industry and competitors.
But for an increasing number of professionals, the real need is efficiently getting high-quality, Business Web content out to the rest of their organization. This was the challenge we helped solve with Mark Heindselman, Manager Knowledge Network & Info Services at Emerson Process Management. As Mark described,
“We were looking for a better solution to find business relevant content from the web and found FirstRain to be superior to others in this space at delivering highly relevant content. FirstRain allows us to automate the collection of business content and distribute it across the company. We can now put in our users email box or RSS reader the web based news they are looking for and no more. The FirstRain Support team has been very responsive to our requests in setting up and rolling out our service.”
It’s always gratifying when you hear how you’re helping real-world users solve real-world business challenges, and we look forward to solving those challenges for many more!
I am excited to announce today that Ryan Warren joined FirstRain as Vice President of Marketing and that Aparna Gupta has been promoted to Managing Director of FirstRain India.
Recruiting an executive with Ryan’s experience, history of success, and track record of innovative thinking in B2B information solutions is another critical step on our exciting growth path. Previously, Ryan led product management at Dow Jones & Co. for the global Factiva information research product line. In his prior 12 years at Dow Jones and Factiva, Ryan held a variety of sales, marketing, product and general management leadership roles. I am delighted that Ryan has joined the FirstRain team. Welcome on board, Ryan!
I’m also happy to report that Aparna is now Managing Director of FirstRain India. Aparna has been instrumental in developing a strong R&D organization in Gurgaon and will continue to make FirstRain India a Central R&D Hub. The success of our solutions is a direct result of our focus on technology and the innovations emerging from our engineering and analytics teams. Aparna has been a key leader in this important transformation across our business. Congratulations Aparna!
To see the full press releases of these announcements, please visit the Press & News section of our website.
