Building the Electronic Arts of Casual Gaming: PlayFirst CEO John Welch (Part 1)

The Internet is changing the content business dramatically, and in this story, we will explore the casual gaming industry through the eyes of entrepreneur John Welch, a gaming industry veteran, who hopes to build a brand as high-impact as Electronic Arts in video gaming, through his venture PlayFirst. I met John a long time ago

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Jim Satloff & Neal Goldman’s AI Engine, Inform (Part 5)

SM: Let’s discuss your financial history, in the final segment of the conversation. Who financed the company at the very beginning? I assume it was some of Neal’s Capital IQ proceeds that went into Inform. JS: It was friends and family, yes. SM: Did you raise Venture money? How much? From whom?

Jim Satloff & Neal Goldman’s AI Engine, Inform (Part 4)

SM: What is the business model of your company? JS: As I showed you, Sramana, we have 2 different business models, one a fee-for-service model that has a consistent, recurring revenue stream, and a revenue-share, ad-based model, which is more consistent with the lighter implementation of our products that I demoed for you. SM: What

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Jim Satloff & Neal Goldman’s AI Engine, Inform (Part 3)

SM: What is your personal background? JS: I have an undergraduate degree in computer science with a specialization in artificial intelligence and natural language processing. I also have a graduate degree in business (an MBA). Both degrees are from Columbia University. Prior to joining Inform, I was the CEO and President of C.E. Unterberg, Towbin,

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Jim Satloff & Neal Goldman’s AI Engine, Inform (Part 2)

SM: What is your target customer? (Please provide a good segmentation perspective) JS: Our target clients include publishers and information providers who seek to maximize the value of their content. Many of these publishers support a network of properties, and employ Inform’s technology to offer more value to their users across sites. We also operate

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Taking on Business Intelligence: Lucidera CEO Ken Rudin (Part 8)

SM: Describe some of your team building experiences. Is your management team complete now? KR: Finding the right executive team members can be a nerve-wracking experience. You are essentially giving a huge amount of responsibility to a person who in many cases you’ve only known for a few weeks during the interview process. A key

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Jim Satloff & Neal Goldman’s AI Engine, Inform (Part 1)

It turns out that both Jim Satloff and I happen to be Artificial Intelligence aficionados. What you read here is a discussion on Inform’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) based technology that attempts to create an interesting value proposition for publishers on the web. AI has been a notoriously difficult technology genre with big promises and

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Taking on Business Intelligence: Lucidera CEO Ken Rudin (Part 7)

SM: What stage are you at now? Revenue? Profitability? Traffic? Customers? Users? Any other metrics you track? KR: We launched our service in Q2 of this year, and the response has been fantastic. We’ve already signed up our first set of paying customers, which is a great milestone for us. Initially, our primary goals are

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