Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: High tech - David Metze and Incite Response

INCITE RESPONSE, ENGLEWOOD WWW.INCITERESPONSE.COM FOUNDED: 2001

INITIAL LIGHTBULB: David Metze, working from Colorado as VP of sales and marketing for Philadelphia database marketer IDT, kept running into the same old problem: It was next to impossible to affordably implement narrowly targeted direct marketing campaigns to a hotel or resort's customer base.

Because of high setup costs for printing, sending the same generic postcard or e-mail to every last customer in the database has long been the status quo. When a hotel prints different postcards for different customer groups, costs skyrocket.

"When you get really targeted, the lists get really small," Metze explained. So he started talking with his Denver neighbor Alexander "Lex" Papesh, a graphic designer by trade, and hit upon a tech-savvy solution to the problem: the "largely untapped" potential of digital printing technology. Metze left IDT in June 2001 and founded Incite Response with Papesh three months later. Today, Metze and Papesh are the seven-employee company's president and vice president, respectively.

IN A NUTSHELL: In launching Incite Response, "We brought together very specific design skills, database management skills, printing skills, and project management skills," said Metze. The company's customers--hotels, resorts, and their operating companies--hand over their own customer database and get a personalized direct marketing campaign in return. Using a Hewlett-Packard Indigo digital press, Incite Response is able to print personalized, targeted direct-mail pieces for a "premium" price around $1 to $1.29 per card--vs. about 50 cents going...