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FirstRain and The World of Digital Business Intelligence

Tag Archives: Investorside

FirstRain featured on Investorside this month

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At FirstRain our customers are business people – people looking for high quality real-time intelligence – and so they include both marketing and sales, and investors. Within the investing community we are considered a type of independent research. Independent because we just supply research, we don’t trade or sell you positions, unlike the big banks.

Investorside is an industry association that was formed to help investors find and consume independent research – especially important after the scandals of the early 2000s when sell-side analysts had been pushing stocks they did not believe in.

This month FirstRain is featured on the Investorside site – you can read their newsletter here.

and here is an excerpt:

Smarter than Google or Traditional Intelligence Databases

According to Herscher, business professionals struggle between incomplete and inflexible news or intelligence systems — or Google — as choices for decision content. So they are faced with either incomplete information, or such a quantity of irrelevant information that they cannot find the useful intelligence.

“If you are trying to do an in-depth analysis on Domino’s Pizza as an investment candidate – looking for company strengths and weaknesses, competitive positioning and market demand drivers – in a Google search you will have to wade through store locations, coupons and menus,” Herscher explains. “Conversely, if you use a news service, or even an intelligence database like Factiva or Lexis Nexis, you will be missing critical web content.”

FirstRain monitors and then extracts, filters and organizes only relevant intelligence from the web. The information is delivered to users as efficient reports about a company’s business environment including recent events, industry trends, competitive dynamics and management turnover.

“FirstRain is particularly valuable in helping clients keep track of fast-moving industries such as technology and clean energy,” Herscher continues. “Users can monitor critical industry topics and lists of companies and receive monitors to keep them up to date with the important changes impacting their holdings.”

Joining the board of Investorside

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As we announced today – I’ve joined the board of the non-profit group Investorside. This is a trade association with a mission to “increase investor and pensioner trust in the U.S. capital markets system through the promotion and use of investment research that is financially aligned with investor interests”.

The need for a group like Investorside grew out of the mistrust investors felt for research after the research/banking conflicts became visible in 2001. Sellside researchers were promoting stocks long after they knew they were a bad investment, in order to keep the investment banking fees, and so their own fees going.

Today the group’s members are investment research firms “providing research that works purely for investors”.

FirstRain is used by investors and by corporations today – both when the goal is to do institutional grade research from the web. When I was approached to get involved in Investorside, and to serve on the board, I thought it was a very good fit. It’s an opportunity for me to help the research community using my experience in web 2.0 and growing markets, and it’s an opportunity for me (and FirstRain) to continue to grow in our understanding of the research needs of the investment community.

Here’s the expanded mission:
The Investorside Research Association serves its members through three primary functions:
Certifying Research Providers — Investorside certifies that its members are free of investment banking, consulting, and research-for-hire conflicts and provides certified member firms with the trademarked Investorside Seal.

Promoting the Growth of Independent Research — Through Investorside.org, annual conferences and regular media communication, Investorside markets its member firms to individual and institutional investors.

Promoting Government Policy that Encourages the Use of Independent Research — Investorside represents its members’ interests before regulators, law-makers and members-of-industry, promoting the use of investment research that is aligned with investor interests.