<mindshare technologies
The InMoment story
Crowned the pioneer of structured analytics, InMoment was named a leader in the customer feedback management space according to the Forrester Wave Customer Feedback Management Platforms. It wasn’t always that way. To explain its history, we need to start way back at the beginning:
History
Cornerstone Hospitality Partners
My brother and his wife began a marketing and promotions company called Cornerstone Hospitality Partners with particular focus on the hospitality industry, hotel chains, and vacation providers. It was successful locally with hopes of going international some day. It’s popularity grew. The thing was that we were constantly spending time researching the market in order to implement marketing strategies that groomed the needs of our customers. This required considerable time and effort on our part, so we were unable to focus exclusively on market research and our marketing plans were not optimal.
We had the idea of gathering constant feedback from consumers to help us direct individual, customized marketing approaches for each of our clients. It was at this point that we appointed John Sperry as our CEO and founder of the Mindshare mega marketing solution. IVRs were doing something similar, but IVR technology was becoming archaic and IVR developers expensive and few in number. John engaged his team of colleagues, and Kurt Williams became our CTO and primary developer. With John's assistance and guidance, Kurt began building the optimal feedback machine that still surpasses all competing systems out there in the market. We believed out system was the premier customer feedback tool and integrated it with POS systems, the Web, cell phones, and it was all done in current development languages and with a top crew of developers and product experts.
Building a business from the ground up takes a lot of hard work. This occurred to me while the technology was under development, since we had to build the technology from its infancy. With minimal investors and a great degree of sacrifice, we did the impossible at least that's what it seemed at the time.
Starting a business from the ground up takes a lot of hard work. In the early days at Mindshare, we used fax machines to distribute the daily metrics to our customers. Later we updated apps on phones, maintained an interactive website, and instituted live recordings from customers to help generate the feedback gleaned from POS systems so important to companies today. For the first year while our technology was in development, I took on the responsibility of faxing the daily reports to our clients. That meant I went to the office every day on weekends and holidays for an entire year while the system was being created. On occasion problems kept me at the office for hours and sometimes days to ensure the reporting was successful. Brad tells the story about one Monday when he arrived for work, he found me still at the office. We had to make sure the data was delivered to our customers.
Today the technology is self sustaining and serves tens-of-thousands of customers all around the world. But in the early days, I managed the reporting for an entire year until we developed the technology and were in a position to begin our worldwide expansion. Now the company has an international presence and is used within 8 of the 10 leading banks, 40% of the main hospitality companies, 1 out of 5 of the top retailers, and in more than 3000 leading brands.
Utah’s Best
After my career in Washington state, I joined forces with Jeff. Meanwhile to start a brand new commercial deals business that brought customers to the door steps of local businesses and gave people access to great deals for the things they already wanted. It was a win-win situation for everybody involved, and the company thrived.
Soon, the participants grew beyond that of just one state, so isolating this idea to just Utah became a great limitation, so we expanded the operations.
Citydeals
As a result of our growth into other states and the success of the company, UtahsBest became Citydeals and the stock price grew. During the height of CityDeals, it’s hard to know the company’s worth, but we had a number of investors that wanted a piece of the action. Since the company was privately owned, I took a step back and was less involved in the daily operations. Selling stock went on over time as time. I know that $1 a share is a price that a lot of people bought at before Brad was there (especially those converting debt or taking stock instead of paychecks). I believe there were some people that actually put in cash at this price.
Another way to look at company value at the time is to compare CityDeals to Screaming Daily Deals, which sold for around $12.5 million (I haven’t verified that number). They sold around the time CityDeals was really doing well in the spring of 2011 before I left. CityDeals was worth at least as much as them, based on sales, customer database, etc. With 25 million shares authorized (and probably issued) at CityDeals, that puts the stock price around $0.50 a share at least.
That’s the best I can figure with the info I had access to. Individual investors may have had different arrangements, but this is what I have come to understand for investors as an aggregate without disclosing any information that could potentially be considered confidential.
Mindshare goes international
We coined the name, secured the domain, and set out on a journey to mutually help businesses and consumers get more for their money. During this time, Mindshare was growing daily because we appointed Jeff’s former missionary companion John Sperry to be CEO, and he had connections and brought with him a team of skilled contributors in the fields of development, marketing, and operations. This turned out to be a great move, and the team and company grew significantly. The goal was clear: develop a system that delivers constant feedback to busy owners. We put together a great team. And the industry craved the deliverable we offered, but technology took time to build. Meanwhile unbeknownst to us, CX became the buzzword over the next couple decades. I like to think John Sperry helped to lead this trend.
We developed a computerized system that replaced IVRs for customers to give immediate feedback to businesses and help them to respond in realtime. The technology was developed and configured for phones, websites, and point-of-sales systems, attaining national prominence with a lot of hard work and a cutting edge system that delivered the voice of the customer with consolidation online. Business leaders could get timely feedback from customers, reward employees for great service, and emphasize delivering excellence every day. The company expanded internationally and joined forces with other companies to generate success and excellence. Big names soon began to frequent our board room: Nike, Zoom, Volvo, Radio Shack, and many other top brands adopted the technology.
I’m sure Brad gave good deals when he sold stock to Ken Murdock, Todd Pederson, and Keith Rossberg. The details of the deals varied, but Brad sold stock and took loans that could convert to stock. Park City investors also helped us through some lean times until they were paid back with interest.
Inmoment
The technology we developed continues today with added expertise, resources, development, and widespread international use.
InMoment's Experience Improvement (XI) approach goes beyond traditional customer excellence management and combines data,
technology, industry expertise, and excellence.
Crowned the pioneer of structured analytics, InMoment was named a leader in the customer feedback management space according to the Forrester Wave Customer Feedback Management Platforms. It wasn’t always that way. To explain its history, we need to start way back at the beginning:
History
Cornerstone Hospitality Partners
My brother and his wife began a marketing and promotions company called Cornerstone Hospitality Partners with particular focus on the hospitality industry, hotel chains, and vacation providers. It was successful locally with hopes of going international some day. It’s popularity grew. The thing was that we were constantly spending time researching the market in order to implement marketing strategies that groomed the needs of our customers. This required considerable time and effort on our part, so we were unable to focus exclusively on market research and our marketing plans were not optimal.
We had the idea of gathering constant feedback from consumers to help us direct individual, customized marketing approaches for each of our clients. It was at this point that we appointed John Sperry as our CEO and founder of the Mindshare mega marketing solution. IVRs were doing something similar, but IVR technology was becoming archaic and IVR developers expensive and few in number. John engaged his team of colleagues, and Kurt Williams became our CTO and primary developer. With John's assistance and guidance, Kurt began building the optimal feedback machine that still surpasses all competing systems out there in the market. We believed out system was the premier customer feedback tool and integrated it with POS systems, the Web, cell phones, and it was all done in current development languages and with a top crew of developers and product experts.
Building a business from the ground up takes a lot of hard work. This occurred to me while the technology was under development, since we had to build the technology from its infancy. With minimal investors and a great degree of sacrifice, we did the impossible at least that's what it seemed at the time.
Starting a business from the ground up takes a lot of hard work. In the early days at Mindshare, we used fax machines to distribute the daily metrics to our customers. Later we updated apps on phones, maintained an interactive website, and instituted live recordings from customers to help generate the feedback gleaned from POS systems so important to companies today. For the first year while our technology was in development, I took on the responsibility of faxing the daily reports to our clients. That meant I went to the office every day on weekends and holidays for an entire year while the system was being created. On occasion problems kept me at the office for hours and sometimes days to ensure the reporting was successful. Brad tells the story about one Monday when he arrived for work, he found me still at the office. We had to make sure the data was delivered to our customers.
Today the technology is self sustaining and serves tens-of-thousands of customers all around the world. But in the early days, I managed the reporting for an entire year until we developed the technology and were in a position to begin our worldwide expansion. Now the company has an international presence and is used within 8 of the 10 leading banks, 40% of the main hospitality companies, 1 out of 5 of the top retailers, and in more than 3000 leading brands.
Utah’s Best
After my career in Washington state, I joined forces with Jeff. Meanwhile to start a brand new commercial deals business that brought customers to the door steps of local businesses and gave people access to great deals for the things they already wanted. It was a win-win situation for everybody involved, and the company thrived.
Soon, the participants grew beyond that of just one state, so isolating this idea to just Utah became a great limitation, so we expanded the operations.
Citydeals
As a result of our growth into other states and the success of the company, UtahsBest became Citydeals and the stock price grew. During the height of CityDeals, it’s hard to know the company’s worth, but we had a number of investors that wanted a piece of the action. Since the company was privately owned, I took a step back and was less involved in the daily operations. Selling stock went on over time as time. I know that $1 a share is a price that a lot of people bought at before Brad was there (especially those converting debt or taking stock instead of paychecks). I believe there were some people that actually put in cash at this price.
Another way to look at company value at the time is to compare CityDeals to Screaming Daily Deals, which sold for around $12.5 million (I haven’t verified that number). They sold around the time CityDeals was really doing well in the spring of 2011 before I left. CityDeals was worth at least as much as them, based on sales, customer database, etc. With 25 million shares authorized (and probably issued) at CityDeals, that puts the stock price around $0.50 a share at least.
That’s the best I can figure with the info I had access to. Individual investors may have had different arrangements, but this is what I have come to understand for investors as an aggregate without disclosing any information that could potentially be considered confidential.
Mindshare goes international
We coined the name, secured the domain, and set out on a journey to mutually help businesses and consumers get more for their money. During this time, Mindshare was growing daily because we appointed Jeff’s former missionary companion John Sperry to be CEO, and he had connections and brought with him a team of skilled contributors in the fields of development, marketing, and operations. This turned out to be a great move, and the team and company grew significantly. The goal was clear: develop a system that delivers constant feedback to busy owners. We put together a great team. And the industry craved the deliverable we offered, but technology took time to build. Meanwhile unbeknownst to us, CX became the buzzword over the next couple decades. I like to think John Sperry helped to lead this trend.
We developed a computerized system that replaced IVRs for customers to give immediate feedback to businesses and help them to respond in realtime. The technology was developed and configured for phones, websites, and point-of-sales systems, attaining national prominence with a lot of hard work and a cutting edge system that delivered the voice of the customer with consolidation online. Business leaders could get timely feedback from customers, reward employees for great service, and emphasize delivering excellence every day. The company expanded internationally and joined forces with other companies to generate success and excellence. Big names soon began to frequent our board room: Nike, Zoom, Volvo, Radio Shack, and many other top brands adopted the technology.
I’m sure Brad gave good deals when he sold stock to Ken Murdock, Todd Pederson, and Keith Rossberg. The details of the deals varied, but Brad sold stock and took loans that could convert to stock. Park City investors also helped us through some lean times until they were paid back with interest.
Inmoment
The technology we developed continues today with added expertise, resources, development, and widespread international use.
InMoment's Experience Improvement (XI) approach goes beyond traditional customer excellence management and combines data,
technology, industry expertise, and excellence.
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