July 22, 2002

Hill Insiders Pitch Data-Gathering Wares

Michael Hardy – Staff Writer, Potomac Tech Journal

A software firm co-founded by well-known Washington, D.C., journalists Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke has joined the growing galaxy of companies trying to find money in the world of intelligent searching technology.

Called Illumen, the Web-based software scours more than 3,000 sources of information – everything from newspapers including the New York Times to specialized offerings like legislative update services in individual states – looking for data specified by a user. The system uses artificial intelligence to find information that matches a concept, but not a keyword, and to learn over time to find more precisely what the user wants.

The system then “pushes” the information to the user, who doesn’t have to remember to look for results on a regular basis.

The company, WashingtonLive, Inc., is marketing the system to lobbying firms, law firms with heavy legislative activity, and other public affairs organizations with an interest in legislation.

President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Anthony said the idea is to eliminate the hours that an attorney or lobbyist would spend keeping up with developments in his or her area of interest, letting the software do the crawling.

“The legal marketplace has had a lot of investment in technology, the banking area has had a lot of technology investment, but the public affairs arena is an area that has been overlooked,” he explained. “This is something where there was just a hole. We think it brings this market up to speed with other markets. Anyone who needs to monitor and track information, and then have news pushed to them, this engine can do that.”

WashingtonLive has no customers yet, but Anthony said all eight of the companies that beta-tested the system are signing up, and about a dozen other potential buyers are looking over proposals. The company charges $850 per month per user for its standard service, or $450 for a stripped-down package.

Illumen also features a “high touch” approach to customer service, Anthony added, which allows users to consult with the company and configure their Illumen implementation for maximum effectiveness.

The system searches Web sites as well as specialized databases including the Federal Register and legislation tracking service in individual states. WashingtonLive has about 3,000 information services and is in talks with others, including the Congressional Quarterly, to make their content available as well.

Finding novel ways to differentiate the company is critical because the idea of tailoring searches to find specialized information isn’t new. In the Potomac region, Arlington, Va.’s Cyveillance Inc. employs a team of data analysts to track the online use and abuse of client’s brands. TextOre Inc., also in Arlington, conducts sophisticated searches, lacking Illumen’s artificial intelligence but boasting multilingual capabilities. And Convera, in Vienna, Va., offers software to mine internal databases.

As a result, companies set themselves up for success by targeting specific vertical markets and implementing specialized features, said Robert Lerner, an analyst at Current Analysis in Sterling, Va. The search tools target a niche above general Internet users who type keywords into Google or Alta Vista to find Web pages.

“It’s a field that everybody recognizes the need for. The great thing is you’ve got various industries actively partnering with these companies,” he said.

“[The companies] really have a broad set of capabilities. Google wants to get into this enterprise search field, and they just don’t have the technology.”

But even while companies know they need the software, they remain slow to spend money, said Chris Mann, chief financial officer at Convera. “The doors are open, but companies aren’t automatically going to pony up dollars immediately,” he said. “It’s a much longer sales cycle.”

The balancing act for offerings like Illumen is to have an interface sophisticated enough for highly specialized searches but simple enough for non-technology experts to use it, said Rob Kodey, chief technology officer at Cyveillance.

“It’s a tradeoff in ease of use versus complexity,” he said. “If the search is restricted to an area that a person is an expert in, they are going to know how to structure a search to get the best results.”

Kondracke, executive editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, and Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, launched the company with veteran business leader William Bailey and former assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, Thomas Donnelly, Jr.

The founders invested $100,000 of their own money and raised $500,000 from friends and family and from the nine-member board of directors, on which they and Anthony sit.

The company is not seeking additional funding.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we have a solid product that’s well received in the market. Right now the idea is to grow in the manner of an old economy company,” Anthony said.