Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: discovery

Inveni Launches Discovery Engine That Gives You Human-Filtered Recommendations Based On Millions of Crowd-Matched Movies

October 2, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Inveni-logoInveni LLC has launched a discovery engine that is says “will drive social recommendations in the Web’s next wave.” The company’s free consumer service will also enable better targeted advertising — and, says the firm, change how consumers both make and receive recommendations on the Web.  The service is now publicly available, after more than a year in development and several months of private beta testing. The company (formerly known as Open Preferences, and based in Minnetonka, MN) made its debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco this week, and also presented the same day at the midVenturesLAUNCH startup conference in Chicago.

“The next wave of the Web will be about personalization. We’re focusing on using personalization to meaningfully improve discovery and decision making,” said Aaron Weber, CEO and cofounder. “The Inveni discovery engine leaps ahead of other online recommendation services.  What we’ve developed is unlike anything previously available.  Inveni consolidates ratings you put anywhere online – Netflix, IMDB, and more – provides tools to make and receive recommendations wherever you are, and helps you make better, more informed buying decisions.” The service has received positive feedback from users during the private beta over the past several months, said Weber.

Inveni-PersRecommendations Inveni provides its highly personalized product recommendations based on a consumer’s universal taste profile.  To create a personalized taste profile, Inveni empowers users to aggregate product and service ratings they’ve made across the Internet to quickly build deep, rich profiles of their tastes.  Beginning with the media categories of movies and TV, users can share their taste profile information with friends and other services online.  Inveni also facilitates product recommendations between friends (word of mouth), based on their tastes.

“We use this taste profile data, along with our unique crowd-refined recommendation engine, to provide highly targeted advertising, while simultaneously providing consumers with a compelling personalized service for discovery and sharing,” said Robert Bodor, CTO and cofounder, “We aim to become the premier provider of highly targeted consumer data for advertising online. We do that by turning the current consumer data model upside down, putting the user in control of their information.  We are entirely opt-in, and are raising the bar on consumer privacy protection.” Inveni-MyTastes

The company produced a fun, two-minute video to describe its value proposition to consumers, which you can view here.

Inveni describes itself as being “dedicated to driving the personalization revolution that will be Web 3.0.”  It was founded in 2008 by two experienced Internet entrepreneurs, Aaron Weber and Robert Bodor, and has a stellar set of successful Internet-industry executives acting as advisors. It is privately funded. 

Prior to Inveni, Aaron Weber, CEO and Cofounder, was COO and cofounder of W3i (formerly Freeze.com), a software marketing company based in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Aaron helped bootstrap the company to $25 million in annual revenues in seven years.  W3i has been profitable every year since its inception, and has provided initial investors with a 10x return in the first 5 years.  Aaron has received the SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year award and the Ernst & Young Regional Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Robert Bodor, Inveni’s Chief Technical Officer and Cofounder, spent four years as a consultant for McKinsey & Company before he and Aaron founded Inveni.  There, he advised Fortune 500 clients in the high-tech industry on operations, innovation, and product development.  Previously, Robert was cofounder, president, and CTO of Point Cloud, an Internet company that provided interactive product visualization to prominent online retailers.  Robert holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering. He has invented and commercialized multiple Internet software technologies and has authored seven patents.

Follow Inveni on Twitter at www.twitter.com/discoverinveni and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/inveni.

NOTE: A version of this post first appeared on Minnov8.com, a site that showcases web innovation in Minnesota.

(Disclosure: the writer has a consulting relationship with Inveni LLC.)

Anticipating Defrag….

October 29, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Getting excited about the Defrag conference, kicking off this Sunday evening in Denver. Once again, Eric Norlin and his colleagues who originally conceived this event (including VC Brad Feld) have planned a wonderful conference program, and again attracted a stellar group — coming off a blowout successful first-year event a year ago. Defrag2008-logo
(I wrote about the inaugural version extensively: here's an index of my Defrag 2007 posts. Actually, I believe it was the last event I live-blogged, versus the live-Twittering approach I've adopted since for my conference reporting. Why has Twitter just sort of taken over?) And, with this year's advisory board including people like Esther Dyson (of PC Forum fame) and Chris Shipley (of DEMO fame), how could this not be another fantastic conference?

Last year's experience was so great in every way that I took to describing it as basically like a religious experience. I was in awe hobnobbing with so many luminaries and big thinkers. I also got to connect again with many of my friends from the early days of the Internet — Doc Searls, Chris Locke, David Weinberger, Steve Larsen, and others.  I love my (younger) friend Aaron Fulkerson's testimonial comment about Defrag 2007, used on the current web site: "The
event had quite the attendee and speakers
list. You couldn’t spit and not
hit an industry notable."  It was an amazing group — all told, about 300. The collective intelligence in the room was unlike
anything I've ever experienced, and the program, keynotes, and
discussions — both the panels and the informal variety — were
off-the-charts valuable and thought-provoking.  There was just this energy level that I can't fully describe…that we were about to collectively imagine the future of the Internet, the social web, a whole new level of collaboration. You had to be there.

And you should be there this year! It's not too late, and I even have a juicy discount code posted in my sidebar to the right. [Shhh, don't tell anybody.  I'm not sure I'm supposed to be offering that to all my blog readers — but what the hell! Maybe Eric Norlin won't read this… 🙂 ] The best way to get the real skinny about what's in store this year is to check out the Defrag blog, which Eric writes so well. The man has a gift for storytelling. And, of course, check out the list of stellar speakers…and the great agenda. This conference is packed with aha moments and extreme takeaways.

What's also cool is that there are three speakers from my home state of Minnesota. Rich Hoeg of Honeywell, whom I met at our "Minnebar" BarCamp event this past spring, will be speaking about social search in the corporate environment, and Connie Bensen, a community strategist now working with Network Solutions, will be on a panel about "making the social web." Oneplace_logo
And I'm especially looking forward to a panel on "Re-imagining
the metaphors behind collaborative
tools," which includes my friend Steve Kickert of Minnesota's own Riverock Technologies, who'll be talking about his very cool, just released from beta OnePlace™ online team collaboration and work management system. 
These guys are some amazing developers, and this thing rocks. (I know — I use it!) You can catch some buzz about OnePlace™ just starting to appear here and here. [Full disclosure: I'm a consultant to Steve's company.]

Want to see who else you'll be able to hobnob with in this intimate setting?  Check out this blog post that lists just some of the many companies attending.  People, I'm tellin' ya, this is a heavy-duty crowd!  Want to read a great rundown on what your two-day experience will be like at Defrag?  Check out this blog post, which will give you "a sense of what you'll encounter" at this great conference.

I really hope you can make it to Defrag. See you in Denver!

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