Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Interview with Adam Selig, CEO of Visible Technologies
Yesterday, Seattle-based Visible Technologies (www.visibletechnologies.com) announced it had raised $12M in a Series B funding for its Internet brand and reputation management service. To get more insight into the company and funding, we talked with Adam Selig, CEO of Visible Technologies.
What does your service provide to brands, what's the idea behind the company?
Adam Selig: The idea behind the company is to provide innovative solutions to brand and companies and all online communicators. We really focus on two areas--search engines and social media. From the reputation management standpoint, to proactive and positive brand building, we give companies options to help them facilitate participation in these spaces.
When you say that what do you mean?
Adam Selig: Companies are being more and more interested in finding certain communities that are advocates for brands or advocates for certain key topics. For example, environmental issues, or other issues that affect their lives. When brands can help serve that goal, or are doing things in that space and want to know about it, they have traditionally been afraid to have conversations and participate with people. This one-on-one marketing is fairly new in the marketplace. What we do, is we've invented technology that helps make it easier to access, understand, and participate in social media communities.What's the story on the company, and how did it start?
Adam Selig: The company was founded in 2003. The founders of the company--two of the founders, Dean Graziano and Jim Webber are still with the firm--started out in the traditional search engine optimization and pay-per-click business in Seattle. Its first innovative product was to develop a reputation management solutions for search engines, to help people understand if negative information was showing up at the top of the search engine results. They ensured that positive information was promoted in the search engines. The company built itself on that platform, and in July of 2006 WPP made a strategic investment in the firm, which we are now calling our Series A. They gave us a strategic investment and partnered with us, and then we started building out TruCast, our social media monitoring, analytics, and participation tool
. Why the VC round now, and what will you be using the funding for?
Adam Selig: We have gotten our product out there, and there has been an amazing reception. We have a number of Fortune 100 clients. We really invested in building out our core technology to get to our initial product, and we now need to build out the marketplace and continue to add enhancements and functionality to meet the growing opportunity in the marketplace.
Was WPP the only prior investor in the company?
Adam Selig: It was just WPP, we also have an angel investment from a group as well, which is headed by Joe Grano, who is currently chairman of our board and former Chairman of UBS PaineWebber.
WPP is quite well known in the advertising area, how did you connect with them?
Adam Selig: Both our executive team, as well as our pre-WPP board of directors had lots of connections. They recognized that the value of our products would be best served in the hands of communicators--advertisers, PR professionals, in addition to our direct clients. There is an amazing opportunity for a large communications agency to fulfill their promise to clients, to get into social media as a channel. We had the opportunity to meet WPP, and they quickly understood the potential value to their business, and how this would help them differentiate in the marketplace. It's important to note, however, that we're not exclusive to WPP. But, by having their involvement, we get feedback from agencies and strategic insights to help us craft products to meet the needs of public relations professionals and other communicators.
Thanks for the interview!