I came across a couple of interesting posts today exploring the opportunity of exploiting the vast array of information available on the Web for investment gain.
Fred Wilson posted here with his perspective from being located in the financial capital of the world. He references some companies that have had success in this area over the past 8-10 years. NOTE – while Fred has seen a few examples, I am quite shocked that the number is so low.
Next, one of the blogs to which Fred refers notes here the lack of projects / companies trying to exploit this obvious opportunity.
This is something that has been near the top of my mind for quite some time. I was under the assumption that this space would be overly crowded by now. That now seems to be a false assumption … time to pick up the phone and call my buddies and MBA classmates to see what the current state of the art is here and where opportunity may lie.
To echo Fred’s point, while investing and the financial services industry is something that interests me quite a bit, it has not consumed me down in Austin, TX, as it consumes few people here like it would in a financial center such as NYC or even Boston where it’s tough to turn your head without being exposes to investing. This is not a judgement, but an observation.
– brian
