Local Matters - Profile
HQ: Denver, CO
Founded: 2005
Management: CEO is Perry Evans who was CEO, since 2001, of Aptas - one of three companies that merged to form Local Matters. He was also CEO of Webb Interactive, co-founder of IM company Jabber and founder and President of MapQuest. He was Web GM at RR Donnelley were he worked on interactive yellow pages.
Investors: The company was formed through the merger of Aptas, ISx and YP Solutions. In May 2005, it raised $15M from Spencer Trask, Software Seed Capital and other boutique funds.
Business Model: The company is trying to apply the yellow pages model to the Web by making improvement to local search. Local Matters sells its software and services to telecom carriers and Yellow Page publishers who then use it on their own sites.
Competitors: Superpages, Infospace, Topix.net and to some extent Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Google.
Dirt: Advertisers are very interested in local search placement and the likes of Topix.net have shown just how neglected this area is. We imagine that Local Matters platform is very desirable to print yellow pages publishers, however, we suspect that most local search will be done on Yahoo, Google, and newspaper sites so it makes us nervous that Local Matters’ core business is comprised of companies whose net territory is withering.
Edmonton dominated the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday night and the 4-0 margin in Game 6 makes it hard to imagine the Oilers not hoisting hockey’s Holy Grail above their heads in less than 48 hours. And it would not come as any shock to see defenseman Chris Pronger, who had another 31-minute night, take the honors for the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP.
Edmonton dominated the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday night and the 4-0 margin in Game 6 makes it hard to imagine the Oilers not hoisting hockey’s Holy Grail above their heads in less than 48 hours. And it would not come as any shock to see defenseman Chris Pronger, who had another 31-minute night, take the honors for the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP.