We're delighted to announce that Rick Gibson, an experienced, entrepreneurial professional who has been serving our board of directors, has accepted our offer to take over as President and CEO of CopperKey.

This appointment was championed by our founder and Chairman, Dr. David Castillo, who will now be 100% focused on our technology platform and helping develop our key partners. This is an important step forward for our company. With demand growing for our predictive marketing software, we’re being approached by a number of major players within the direct marketing industry. We have the opportunity to set an industry standard by partnering with, and supporting, these companies, but this will require rapid expansion of our service, marketing and customer support capabilities

Rick, with more than 30 years experience building fast-growth technology companies, is the right man for the job. He co-founded Knowledge Adventure, which was sold to Cendant for $100 million, and GNP Development, which was sold to Lotus Development Corp. He also worked alongside high tech pioneer Bill Gross in building Idealab, which incubated and launched a series of successful technology companies, and was one of Idealab’s first company CEOs.

Rick understands that we’re at the frontier of a major shift in how companies use data. Instead of just capturing and storing data, leading organizations are building competitive strategies around data-driven insights that are actionable. The key to obtaining those insights is through the use of analytics – sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis, and predictive modeling, that is typically executed by teams of highly trained analysts.

Taking aim at this explosive new market, we’ve leapfrogged vendors who sell software tools to analysts and have instead automated key analytic and predictive modeling functions so that end users can get real-time, on-demand results without taking up scarce human analytic resources. It will be up to Rick to show us how to convert our technical advantage into rapid and sustainable market growth.

Our BizFusion™ software, as a web-based product, is positioned in a growing new category known as software-as-a-service (SaaS). This means our solution does not require clients to purchase hardware or software and the service can be rapidly deployed through the Internet.

BizFusion™ automates the critical process of identifying an organization's best customers. Essentially working like an intelligent search engine for customer data, end users can use point-and-click options to search a customer database to obtain insight about key attributes and rank customers against up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. BizFusion™ also allows end users to search pre-defined third-party databases, and based on best customer attributes, obtain ranked lists of "look-a-like" prospects.

In the press release announcing his appointment, Rick points out, “These days, the Internet has created increasingly fierce and fluid competition that is forcing companies to learn more about their customers and prospects so that they can become more efficient and effective in targeting and communicating with them. The era of shotgun marketing, where less than a one percent response rate was considered acceptable, is quickly coming to an end. We now can provide an easy-to-use, but sophisticated, tool that enables sales and marketing professionals to target prospects most likely to buy at local, regional and national levels, and tune their campaigns in real time, on the fly.”

We look forward to working with Rick, learning from his experience and enjoying the rewards of his leadership.