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1997-07 |
Alert Technologies, L.L.C. |
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Founder with overall P&L responsibilities for a technology venture startup offering real-time market data notification and wireless messaging services; prepared a private placement memorandum and organized this LLC. As president, architect, designer, and lead programmer (Delphi, SQL), I successfully planned, coordinated, developed, launched, and oversaw the marketing of these services, which included: |
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Monitoring of real-time tick data from financial, sports, traffic, and weather satellite feeds.
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The real-time filter system that detected the occurrence of events satisfying client requirements.
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A real-time multi-port notification system that sent event summary SMS messages to clients via numerous paging networks.
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A 24x7 distributed call center to enroll clients, receive their real-time data filtering requirements, and provide messaging services to pagers. The facility was added to allow clients to review and make adjustments to their filter parameters over the web.
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Logging of all real-time activity for use in customer care and monthly billing of clients.
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Below is the graphic I created for the 1996 private placement memorandum showing how the system worked. |
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Within minutes of a stock making a price move that a client wanted to know about, they received a price-quote notification on their pager. There were numerous customization options for the client (for instance, the price monitored could be the bid price, not just the price of the last trade). For sports, the client would be notified when there was a meaningful score change. For traffic and weather, the client was notified if there were potential hazards on their commute. |
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Below is the graphic showing the layout of the distributed system that achieved this functionality. |
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The real-time multi-server monitoring, event filtering, and messaging system was constructed based on Windows NT server and Borland’s initial Delphi language offering (visual interface based on objected oriented Pascal). Client “Match” filter and “Alert” messaging requirements were contained in an Interbase database that was also managed by Delphi client/server applications used by client service representatives on windows workstations.
The real-time financial tick data was received by a satellite data feed from S&P’s Comstock group and included stocks, options, and bonds, commodities. The real-time sports data arrived by satellite from ESPN. Automated dial-in services were used to periodically retrieve Shadow traffic data.
The company provided a subscription service, where the client bought a customized pager to get started. The company had quickly acquired more than 1,000 subscriber to its services. Unfortunately, this did not generate enough revenues to overcome operational and on-going promotional expenses.
I’m proud of my accomplishments with Alert Technologies, even with the painful experience that the business did not succeed. In retrospect, the venture was a few years ahead of its time. Had it been launched a few years later, it would have benefited from the dot-com investment boom. |
