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100 Customers Announced Today!

Sep 2008/in /by

Very exciting news for FirstRain today – we have announced that we have signed our 100th institutional client. This means over 100 firms have signed up paying subscribers – and the subscriber count is in the thousands.We introduced the new FirstRain strategy and our search-driven research product 2 years ago in October 2006 and we’ve been developing the buyside market aggressively ever since. Our customers are the large and small institutional managers, large and small hedge funds and corporations – and over the last couple of quarters we have seen an acceleration in the number of firms signing on.

The last two years have been a frenetic pace of product development – I’ll write a separate post on our approach there because it’s highly iterative and a little different – and customer appreciation of our product is very rewarding for the team. I have sent a letter (in email) to every production user thanking them for their business, for helping FirstRain get to this point and letting them know the new capabilities that will be in their hands in September.

The press release is on our web site – and has several customers named in it. However, the buyside is a secretive world and so most customers won’t let us use their names. I’m grateful to the customers listed who will!

I completely understand from their point of view – their research process is their critical IP – but it’s tough from a marketing perspective to not be able to name names. The press always wants to talk to a live person who is using and I have yet to find a portfolio manager who has the time or the inclination to take a lot of calls, unless they are a board member or an advisor. So be it – we just have to be persistent and creative in our marketing.

High View

Where’s the edge?

Aug 2008/in /by

We’re in sales training all day today and Keith McCullough of Research Edge came to talk to the sales team about the “tectonic shift” that is happening in investment research today and why he loves our service.

He gave us two terrific concepts that apply to our role in the shift.

1. “the edge is in the question – what question you ask and when you ask it”. It’s no longer speed, it’s no longer whisper, it’s about having the rigorous research process that you ask the question at the right time. FirstRain in the process stimulates continuous, valuable questions.

2. “the internet is the disintermediator”. He thinks there is a generational change happening. Technology is dramatically changing the way people get information. Why did Obama beat the Clintons? (whatever your politics Obama took a new, tactical, technology driven approach). It’s Google vs. the ad agencies – the old style is “coming down” and whole industries are being rebuilt – and Wall St is one of them.

Very inspiring stuff for our sales people. Keith is one of the very high performers on the street – well known for his performance – so he has great credibility with my team. He told them they are selling a hot product, on the leading edge, creating a market as the industry goes through radical change – heady stuff.

Architecture Structure Plan

Why would a CMO care about the web?

Jul 2008/in /by

We have a client who is CMO of a large enterprise software company – and he and his team’s use of FirstRain is an excellent example of the power of the web as a database for corporate decision making.

In this case we have build a model of the company and it’s ecosystem that includes

- the company itself
- each of it’s major competitors
- important industry trends (like business models and delivery mechanisms) and standards
- all web sources – both differentiated like blogs and industry media, plus the commodity like PR and news wires – effectively organizing all possible sources of information
- industry events
- industry trade shows
- companies of personal interest to the executives (you never know what someone will want to track)

The result is a rich intelligence system for the team that not only
a) finds them interesting information about their market and their competitors that they would have missed that impacts their product decisions, and
b) categorizes all information so it is useful, easily accessible and stored for historical review, but
c) also helps them shine in front of their peers because of the information they have at their finger tips when debating decisions.

And we have a happy customer which is what we care about.

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