Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: High Tech ColoradoBiz - Officials of Umbria Communications

INITIAL LIGHTBULB

In 1997, Howard Kaushansky co-founded Boulder's Athene Software, which applied marketing analytics to the telecom market to cut down on customer churn. After selling Athene in 2001, Kaushansky brainstormed with longtime co-worker David Howlett on the "next frontier" of predictive analytics, and came up with the concept behind Umbria Communications: a system that melded predictive analytics with a cognitive understanding of text. One hitch: "We knew the system was, simultaneously, in 2002, three years too early and three years too late," said Kaushansky. "The bubble had already burst. This would have been a very, very attractive deal in 1999. But we knew this technology would come back." It did come back, and with a vengeance.

"We started watching the explosion of the online voice, the 'blogosphere,'" said Kaushansky, using the slang term for the collective 9 million blogs, or web logs, on the Internet. "We decided to take some of this understanding we have of text and some of this understanding we had about predictive-analytics systems and apply it to solve the problem of market research." By 2004, Umbria incorporated with seed funding from a pair of VCs with Colorado offices. Sequel Venture Partners and Vista Ventures. Kaushansky is now the 12-employee company's president and CEO, and Howlett is VP of product management.

IN A NUTSHELL

"The explosion of the online voice ... opened up an opportunity to listen," said Kaushansky. "Every conceivable question you would otherwise want to ask is already answered--voluntarily, unbiased, unsolicited in places like the blogosphere."

Blogs have become a bellwether of social trends," he addded. "The blogosphere becomes the canary in the coal mine for where society is headed."

It follows that Umbria's proprietary technology monitors blogs and message boards for keywords of their clients' choosing (companies, products, brands, etc.).

Umbria distills the data into "actionable market research" in the form of products like the Buzz Report and the Gen Y Report, which are available on a subscription basis for a price that Kaushansky said is competitive with traditional market research.

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Umbria's...