Morningstar Acquires 10-K Wizard

Independent investment research provider Morningstar Inc. last week acquired 10-K Wizard, a provider of SEC EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval) filing research and alert services. The purchase price was $12.5 million (subject to working capital adjustments).

10-K Wizard offers users full-text searching capabilities for real-time and historical SEC EDGAR filings either through subscription or a custom data feed. Users can search companies by ticker symbol, company name, industry type, SIC code, financial form type or by specific industry keywords that appear within the filings. Users can also access global company profiles that include hyperlinks to annual reports and peer companies in addition to stock quotes, news and charts.

This is a very smart acquisition by Morningstar. The ability to more easily search SEC filings will be an ideal addition to Morningstar's functionality and will enable Morningstar customers to gain an even more complete look at companies they research. This deal should certainly help further position Morningstar as a one-stop shop for investment-related information.

For 10-K Wizard, the acquisition will provide more exposure to its capabilities and its relationship with Morningstar should also provide the resources it needs to further develop these tools.

Expert Connections

There's been a bit of press recently around a new start-up called Abrams Research, the eponymous creation of Dan Abrams, until recently the chief legal correspondent for NBC News. The goal of Abrams Research is to build a global database of journalists, bloggers and other media professionals who were willing and able to consult to corporations on media-related issues, but also to do such things as investigative reporting or related background research on behalf of clients.

Abrams Research immediately brought to mind another firm called the Gerson-Lehrman Group, which has been enormously successful in bringing together subject matter experts with investors. Investors tap into the Gerson Lehrman network to get quick brain dumps from top experts in virtually any field to get up to speed quickly on specific industries, or to validate a more general investment thesis.

My own personal experience with Gerson Lehrman offers some useful cautions about this type of business. Gerson Lehrman started with a very personalized approach. Clients would communicate their needs by phone or email to staffers who would search their in-house database for a qualified expert, or go recruit one if needed. A fabulous business able to charge huge fees for its bespoke services was the result.

I got enlisted into the Gerson Lehrman network only about a year ago by a breathless recruiter who said he had an investment bank that urgently wanted to pick my brain. That assignment never materialized, but the recruiter urged me to become a formal part of the network. I agreed and quickly found that Gerson Lehman had morphed from a highly personalized service into an automated "web platform." I dutifully created an elaborate profile for myself and waited to see what would happen.
I've received a number of email inquiries since then, always indicating a client with an urgent need for my expertise. I was supposed to respond to not only indicate my interest, but to sell myself to the client as to why I was the best expert on the topic at hand. That's all fine and dandy, but since these clients never wanted more than an hour of my time, there's only so much time I can justify spending on any one of these inquiries. In addition, Gerson Lehrman has sent an endless stream of emails urging me to post more and more information about myself in order to attract a greater number of projects. Instead of doing the matchmaking itself, Gerson Lehrman now apparently wants it clients to source and qualify experts directly. It finally dawned on me: Gerson Lehrman had evolved from an exclusive, personalized network of experts to a B2B version of eHarmony.com - an online dating service. From my perspective at least, Gerson Lehrman has been an unsatisfying experience, and I have to believe some of their clients must be feeling the same way.

Giving customers the ability to "self-provision" through an online web interface can be beneficial and liberating for all parties for certain types of services with certain price points. But when you build a business based on high fees, lots of service and an air of exclusivity, I'd suggest moving to a web platform that is somewhere between a buying guide and a dating service isn't the optimal strategy.

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Do Tell

Even if you are not familiar with the term "top level domains" or TLD's, you know what they are: think dot com, dot biz, dot net, dot info, and so many others it's difficult to keep track of them all.

The purpose of TLD's has traditionally been remarkably limited. They provide conveniently remembered names that help you get to websites or send email. It's much easier to tell someone to go to www.infocommercegroup.com than to go to 64.78.29.122.

But there is a whole new twist on the concept of TLD's coming in just a few weeks. That's when a new TLD called dot tel opens for business. Operated by Telnic Limited, the new dot tel domain has big ambitions: it wants to be a full-fledged universal contact directory.

I am sure I am poorly describing the underlying technology, but when you order a dot tel domain name, you essentially get both a domain name and a home page. On that home page, you can provide four types of information in a highly structured format: basic contact details (physical address, phone, fax), navigational details (deep links to your corporate website or contact information for departments, subsidiaries or branch offices), geolocation details (links to Google maps) and keywords describing your business. The whole design and format is particularly well optimized for mobile devices.

This is a fascinating concept from a number of angles. First, by specifying a structure to the information that appears on a dot tel "home page," users can be sure of what they will find every time they go to a dot tel domain. Second, you can argue that a company might be better off promoting its dot tel domain than its current company domain because the dot tel domain functions as a convenient "switchboard" of sorts, making it easy for users to get to critical pieces of information conveniently. Third, if dot tel takes off, it could become a central reference database that provides always-current and trusted company contact data. This was a role I thought Plaxo was poised to assume before it decided to morph into a poor imitation of Linked-In.

This is a creative venture with a lot of potential. But will it fly? That's always the question with ambitious and ground-breaking schemes like these. But judging by the big ads in the big media I have been seeing for dot tel, a serious push is going to be made to get market traction. Keep an eye on this one.

Recent News from the InfoCommerce Blog:

Angie's List Gets More Financing
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Labels: dot tel, Linked-In, plaxo, telnic, TLD

Angie's List Gets More Financing

Angie's List, a home improvement and contractor online listings and review service, continues to gain momentum from investors. The company this week announced it has received $18 million in venture debt from Lighthouse Capital Partners. This follows the $35 million Battery Ventures invested for a minority stake in Angie's List back in April. Other investors include Aquent and BV Capital.

Angie's List expanded its offerings in March from covering home-focused companies, such as plumbers, to health care providers. The company plans to expand those offerings on an international scale as well.

Thousands of consumers rate and review local service providers in more than 400 different categories on Angie's List. The company boasts more than 750,000 users in 125 major U.S. cities.

This latest round of financing just shows what a strong business model Angie's List has. Combining user-generated content with a traditional search functionality has proven to be a very successful combination. Before the web, referrals were an important part of the service provider selection process, so it's not a surprise that Angie's List's ratings and reviews are so well received. And as more consumers become comfortable with the entire concept of user-generated content, the number of reviews available for others to view will likely grow at a rapid pace.

It's exciting to know that Angie's List plans to grow internationally, but hopefully the company will expand further in the U.S. as well.

Jigsaw Goes Mobile with SkyData Partnership

Business information provider Jigsaw and SkyData Systems, a first person-centric business mobile application provider, have formed a partnership that will equip smart phone users with mobile access to Jigsaw's directory of more than 1.5 million company contacts via a SkyData application. As a result, SkyData application users can seamlessly connect with Jigsaw's company information listings by clicking from emails, phone calls and text messages or calendar events from their mobile devices.

The integration of the Jigsaw data into SkyData's mobile service is just the first phase of the partnership between the two companies. They plan to also enable users to purchase and submit business contact information using Jigsaw's community-contributed model directly from SkyData.

It's certainly not surprising that Jigsaw has gone mobile with this alliance. More and more people rely on their phones as complete information sources and it's pretty safe to assume that many businesspeople will want to use their phone to access business information, such as the content that Jigsaw provides. Making Jigsaw available in this format was a smart move for the company as data is not nearly as valuable as actionable data. Making its data accessible whenever and wherever users need it will only help to reinforce their need for Jigsaw's service, and will probably help increase both customer loyalty and retention.

At the same time, SkyData also recognizes the need for not just mobile access to information, but information that is accurate. By partnering with an organization like Jigsaw, it will be able to provide that quality data by a brand name that is likely already familiar to many of its customers.