Intelius, Inc., the online information company, won a Stevie Award for Best New Company in The 2006 American Business Awards. Following is a profile of the company and its charismatic co-founder Naveen Jain.

Intelius, Inc. was founded on a vision of information commerce—an environment where anyone anywhere can locate and purchase critical public information online. Intelius recognizes the need for businesses and consumers to access this information for protection, to assist in making informed decisions, and to reconnect. Intelius helps employers to verify a job candidate's background and homeowners to check the credibility of a contractor to avoid fraud.  It allows parents to screen adults in their children's lives to ensure they do not present a danger, and it enables veterans to reconnect with long-lost military buddies. 

Intelius has developed technology to monitor and search billions of public records in real time, providing accurate, affordable, and timely results. With a large database of records and exclusive partnerships with companies such as Yahoo! and AOL, Intelius has established a thriving market online and receives approximately one million visitors to its site daily. 

The company appears to have cornered the information commerce and ID theft prevention markets. The company's customer base has grown 762 percent since 2003, an indicator of the success and widespread adoption of its products and services. With ownership of more than 50 percent of the online people search market, and a ranking among the top 100 commerce sites on the Internet, Intelius is the leader in a burgeoning industry.

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How Competitive Intelligence Helps Businesses to Read Between the Lines
by Edwin Bailey, managing director of  Piribo.com and ReportBuyer.com, online business intelligence for industry

One of the reasons why the executives of U.S. energy group Enron were regarded as “The Smartest Guys in the Room” was because they were able to manipulate their accounting to keep the share price inflated.  They created a raft of special purpose vehicles (SPVs) and, by carefully staying within statutory ownership percentage levels, did not have to declare them in their consolidated accounts.  Only when they slipped up on one of them did the whole network start to unravel.

In his new book, Competitive Intelligence, Christopher Murphy points out how such “off balance sheet” finance was an element in many corporate debacles, and he provides a guide to unpicking an annual report.  It shows how to read between the lines of the facts and figures in the balance sheet, the profit and loss account, and—perhaps most important of all—the cash flow statement.

This book explains the technical mechanisms that some companies offer in their accounts and which professional analysts use and provides advice on how to assess what the figures tell about where a business and might be going.

Corporate crime writer Michael Ridpath explains in the book’s introduction that:  “In business you cannot operate effectively unless you know what everyone else is doing.”   Competitive Intelligence demonstrates that it isn’t just a matter of facts and figures, but the strategy and motivations of your competitors, as well as your customers, that matter. You have to look at all the factors that make a market what it is today, and the factors that will indicate how it is likely to develop in the future.

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Blogs, or web logs, are all the rage these days. Each month in this space we'll point you to several blogs that we think might be of interest to you.

Searchblog : Thoughts on the intersection of search, media, technology, and more …
New Media Musings: Author and blogger J.D. Lasica is one of the world's leading authorities on citizens media and the personal media revolution.
Rattle the Cage : Releasing the leader within you … a blog to assist you on your journey by bringing together thought leaders and practice leaders from around the globe.
Brad Sugars : Blog by the founder of Action International with his comments on the world of business.

Defibtech, LLC, based in Guilford, CT, was the Stevie Award winner for Best Overall Company - Up to 100 Employees in The 2006 American Business Awards.

Defibtech was founded in 1999 with the goal of making Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) affordable and easy to use. AEDs provide life-saving defibrillation during sudden cardiac arrest, one of the leading causes of death in North America.

The co-founders of Defibtech are cardiac surgeon Dr. Glenn Laub and engineer/businessman Gintaras Vaisnys. Glenn and Gintaras became friends in college at Yale. Glenn graduated with a medical degree and eventually became the Director of the Heart Hospital at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, NJ. Gintaras gained an engineering degree and went on to found a number of technology companies. Over 25 years later the two college friends came back together to combine their expertise. Glenn and Gintaras brought together the best of both of their worlds to found the fastest growing defibrillator company in the market.    

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