500’s Demo Day Batch 15 >> Sqoop

Editor's Notes

1. Sqoop is a platform that journalists use to find news. 1
2. We have been growing our base of reporters more than 50% MoM and 80% of our reporters use Sqoop every week. We have become an essential part of the newsroom 3
3. We’ve solved one of their most painful problems: unlocking stories from public records sites like the SEC and federal courts. A huge pain. We save them boatloads of time. And help them get the scoop. Time is everything to them. We don’t have revenue yet, but here’s what we do have:
4. Already one in three business reporters in this country uses Sqoop today. And we just launched in April. 2
5. Now that we own the reporter relationships, shall we talk about money? Journalists one of the most sought-after audience. In fact there’s a legacy $10 billion industry formed around promoting news to these reporters. It’s called public relations and that’s where I’ve spent 20 years of my life. 4
6. And I’ll let you in on a secret: It’s a manual and expensive mess. And reporters hate it. Meanwhile, over at Sqoop, the reporters are there every day finding company news. 3
7. It is only natural that marketing and PR professionals want to pay us a portion of that $10 billion pie. Sqoop can deliver their news to reporters more effectively. 2
8. My cofounder David Kellum is a senior engineer and architect who has built scalable systems for major news organizations like AOL and Thomson Reuters. Before Sqoop, I was Director of Bing PR at Microsoft and VP of Communications at RealNetworks. Earlier I was a journalist. 2
9. After 10 months on the market, one in three business reporters uses Sqoop, and 80% of them every week. If you want to see the future of public relations and journalism, come see us in the back.