Vertical Acuity CEO Gregg Freishtat to Speak at Two Prominent Atlanta Business Events in October
October 13, 2011
Veteran entrepreneur, digital media expert to share business strategies with local technology community
ATLANTA – October 13, 2011 – Vertical Acuity, creators of the world's first content logistics platform for digital publishers, today announced that CEO Gregg Freishtat will appear as a featured panelist at both the upcoming MIT Enterprise Forum "Entrepreneurs Uncensored" luncheon and the Venture Atlanta conference. During each event, Freishtat will share personal experiences from the launch of Vertical Acuity and several of his other companies, and provide tips to help today's aspiring entrepreneurs get their businesses on the road to success.
MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta's "Entrepreneurs Uncensored" luncheon will take place Wednesday, October 19 at the Technology Square Research Building in midtown Atlanta. The event provides entrepreneurs with a realistic view of what they may encounter while developing their businesses. Freishtat will discuss the lessons he has learned in overseeing several successful start-ups and the challenges and traits that have helped him succeed.
The two-day Venture Atlanta conference, taking place October 25-26 at the Georgia Aquarium, connects Georgia's top technology innovators with people and resources to expand their businesses. Freishtat will participate in the show's first panel, "VCs Investing with Angels," and discuss the best ways prospective entrepreneurs can work with venture capitalists and angel investors.
"Leading venture-backed technology companies for nearly two decades has opened my eyes to the numerous challenges entrepreneurs face in the early stages of a business' life," said Freishtat. "It is great to see the Atlanta technology community uniting through these events to help the next generation of business leaders get started, and I am honored to share my experiences and encourage their efforts."
Freishtat currently leads Vertical Acuity, a new Atlanta-based company whose Content Logistix™ Platform permits online publishers to find and publish content from around the Web as easily as friending someone on Facebook. This collection of digital curation and partner management tools, which now includes the Discover search tool, is being used by hundreds of leading websites today, with more added regularly.
Before joining Vertical Acuity, Freishtat founded and served as chairman and CEO for Proficient Systems, a provider of live chat technology for online consumers. Freishtat remains an active private equity investor, and serves on the advisory board for many private companies. To view Gregg Freishtat's complete bio, visit http://www.verticalacuity.com/about-us/management.php.
For more information about "Entrepreneurs Uncensored", visit http://www.mitforumatlanta.org. For more information about Venture Atlanta, visit http://www.ventureatlanta.org
CONTACTS:
For Vertical Acuity
Arketi Group
Ann Revell-Pechar, 404-929-0091 x251
arevellpechar@arketi.com
Vertical Acuity Adds Dave Morgan to Advisory Board
October 4, 2011
Digital advertising veteran joins industry leaders to advance new content logistics company
ATLANTA – October 4, 2011 – Vertical Acuity, creators of the world's first content logistics platform for digital publishers, today announced that Dave Morgan, serial entrepreneur and renowned digital media expert, has joined the company's advisory board. Morgan joins six other industry leaders to help guide Vertical Acuity toward broad industry adoption.
"Vertical Acuity is enabling Web publishers to work together in revolutionary ways by enhancing user engagement and creating incremental revenue," said Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, an ad targeting platform for television. "As content creation and consumption become more distributed, and the ‘destination site' model erodes, publishers need Vertical Acuity to prosper in the world that's coming."
A serial entrepreneur, Morgan was the founder, CEO and chairman of online advertising companies TACODA, Inc. and Real Media, Inc. Most recently, Morgan served as executive vice president, Global Advertising Strategy, at AOL, a Time Warner Company (TWX).
"Advisors like Dave keep us seeing around the corner," said Joe Fiveash, president of Vertical Acuity. "I have worked with Dave for years through Real Media and TACODA, and I feel there is no one who better understands the future of content and advertising delivery. We're thrilled that Dave is committing his time and intelligence to the success of Vertical Acuity."
Vertical Acuity's advisory board consists of leaders in the digital media industry. In addition to Morgan, the board consists of Gaby Darbyshire, Gawker Media; Jeff Lunsford, Limelight Networks; Joe Doran, Whidbey Venture Group; Greg Foster, Buckley Partners; Drew Lipsher, Greycroft LLC; and Doug Weaver, Upstream Group.
Vertical Acuity's Content Logistix Platform permits online publishers to find and publish content from around the Web as easily as friending someone on Facebook. This collection of digital curation and partner management tools, which now includes the Discover search tool, is being used by hundreds of leading websites today, with more constantly being added.
For a full list of partners, or to learn more about Vertical Acuity's Content Logistix Platform, visit www.verticalacuity.com.
CONTACTS:
For Vertical Acuity
Arketi Group
Ann Revell-Pechar, 404-929-0091 x251
arevellpechar@arketi.com
Publishers Unlock New Revenue with Vertical Acuity's Content Logistix™ Platform
September 8, 2011
Addition of Discover Tool to Digital Curation Platform Enables First-of-Its-Kind Content Syndication
ATLANTA - Vertical Acuity today unveiled Discover, a new component of its Content Logistix™ Platform that empowers publishers to find and legally publish relevant articles from across the Web - instantly. Discover enables publishers to send their content to hundreds of third party sites with one simple connection to the Content Logistix™ platform. As a result, Web publishers create new revenues as reader engagement increases, while consumers find timely, interesting articles from around the Web appearing on their favorite sites without having to visit multiple sites to find what they want.
Vertical Acuity's Content Logistix Platform permits online publishers to find and publish content from around the Web with the same ease as sending a friend request on Facebook. This collection of digital curation and partner management tools, which now includes Discover, is being used by hundreds of media partners today, with more constantly being added.
"Vertical Acuity's digital curation tools fundamentally change the way content is discovered and monetized online," said Gregg Freishtat, CEO of Vertical Acuity. "By providing their visitors with diverse and relevant content far beyond what they could afford to produce profitably, publishers keep consumers more engaged and on their sites longer – and, most importantly, increase online revenues. In essence, we are ‘UnGoogling' the Web by removing the constant return to search engines to find content. Consumers remain engaged with brands they trust, yet discover the best content from around the Web."
With Discover, publishers can search for articles by keyword, topic, popularity or publication date. The results are delivered via sophisticated algorithms that scan a massive collection of articles, photos and videos from all sites within the Vertical Acuity network. All results are available for immediate online publication using the Company's Partner Management Platform, enabling publishers to generate profitable page views in real time while eliminating the need for expensive content feeds or business development deals.
"By allowing publishers to develop instant, point-to-point content syndication relationships as they see fit, our innovative platform reduces the costs previously dedicated to maintaining expensive content feeds from traditional subscriptions," added Freishtat. "Discover takes syndication to the next level, giving publishers and editors the power to control content curation and syndication without the costs of doing hundreds of content partnerships and technology integrations."
Sites that have already joined Vertical Acuity's Content Logistix™ network include web-based companies, such as Business Insider and TVGuide.com; broadcast media, such as Fisher Communications, Merideth and Raycom; and traditional print publications, such as Forbes and Rodale, to name just a few.
For a full list of partners, or to learn more about Vertical Acuity's Content Logistix Platform, visit www.verticalacuity.com.
CONTACTS:
For Vertical Acuity
Arketi Group
Ann Revell-Pechar, 404-929-0091 x251
arevellpechar@arketi.com
Vertical Acuity Transforms Online Publishing
February 15, 2011
Appoints Joe Fiveash as President & CRO and is Named Top 100 Private Company
ATLANTA, Ga. – Vertical Acuity has named Joe Fiveash as President and Chief Revenue Officer in a move designed to quickly capitalize on the firm's growth and opportunities ahead with its client base of renowned online publishers. Fiveash, in his most recent post as EVP and General Manager of The Weather Channel Interactive, led the Weather Channel's rise as one of the top content brands in the U.S. across the web and mobile platforms. "In my position at The Weather Channel, we did all the smart things to push our content beyond our site and to bring content in from elsewhere that would contextualize weather information for consumers and advertisers. This was critical to building our brand, our audience and our revenue," Fiveash notes. "Vertical Acuity's platform allows publishers to do those things exponentially better than ever before, and brings consumers the right content, at the right time, tailored to their interests, delivered where it's convenient," Fiveash adds.
"We are leading a charge that will reinvent the economics of online publishing," said Vertical Acuity CEO Gregg Freishtat. "The clients, executive talent and industry recognition we've attracted affirms our strong foothold as the content logistics leader."
In addition, Vertical Acuity was named this month as one of OnMedia's Top 100 Private Companies presented by Always On. According to Tony Perkins, founder and editor of Always On, "The make-up of the OnMedia 100 presents a poetic picture of the mega-trends we see driving the transformation of digital media and entertainment, namely the explosive growth in smartphones, social networking and social commerce, as well as the globalization of entrepreneurship."
The Top 100 competition relied on reams of trend and growth data coupled with personal interviews among countless industry CEOs. Winners were selected from more than 1,000 companies nominated by industry insiders. Perkins continues, "In the process, we also uncovered a new trend that's creating a high-growth company opportunity-the emergence of Web analytics as a powerful tool to help advertisers ascertain the 'wisdom of the crowd' and better target their marketing and branding pitches." Winners were honored January 31 – February 2 during the OnMedia 2011 conference at The Paley Center for Media in New York City.
Also in recent news, Vertical Acuity has added Gaby Darbyshire, COO of Gawker Media to its Board of Advisors. Ms. Darbyshire rounds out a team of industry thought leaders including Joe Doran, Managing Partner of Whidbey Group; Greg Foster of Foster, Buckley Partners; Drew Lipsher of Greycroft LLC; Jeff Lunsford, Chairman and CEO of Limelight Networks and Doug Weaver, Founder and CEO of Upstream Group.
Vertical Acuity's proprietary platform enables publishers to move content to people rather than relying on Google, Facebook and Twitter to move people to content. As the world's first Content Logistics Network ("CLN"), the Company dramatically improves the economics of content creation, online publishing and syndication. This technology empowers online publishers to grow their businesses by discovering, organizing and publishing content to and from thousands of sites across the web, without the cost of developing traditional business relationships. Vertical Acuity enables an intelligent, mass scale digital curation and partner management platform that shifts revenues from search engines and social networks back to publishers and content owners.
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Vertical Acuity is led by a senior management team with the experience to create meaningful change in the digital media world. To witness the technology in action, see www.verticalacuity.com.
CONTACTS:
Gregg Freishtat, CEO, 770-331-6156
Julie Davis Salisbury, Communications, 404-520-0383
Successful, Serial Entrepreneur Receives Funding for 4th Startup
August 26, 2010
Gregg Freishtat Assembles Funding, Proven Leadership Team and Client Roster for Vertical Acuity
ATLANTA, Ga. – The old saying goes that "the third time's a charm," but what does one say when the first, second and third times were all charms, and you're well underway for a fourth? Gregg Freishtat, who with the same team and investors in place has successfully launched and sold three technology companies over the past 17 years, announced today that they closed on up to $4.2 million in Series B funding for Vertical Acuity, a revolutionary infrastructure technology company that promises to reinvent the economic model currently splintering the world of online content distribution.
Simply put, the patent-pending technology behind Vertical Acuity allows people to discover content from around the web without ever leaving the original site they've chosen to visit. "Imagine you're viewing information on the latest financial reform initiative on the New York Times website," explains Freishtat, Vertical Acuity's founder and CEO. "If you want more or related information on that subject beyond what any one site can produce, today you'd go back to Google and click on the next most interesting search result – all of which takes your time and attention away from the first site you chose to visit. With Vertical Acuity, curated content from across the web is automatically injected into the site you've chosen to trust in the first place – in essence, we're ungoogling™ the web."
The experience is seamless to the consumer, but incredibly powerful for publishers and their efforts to build branded business models online. With infrastructure technology that moves content to people instead of people to content, Vertical Acuity empowers publishers to provide access to the best content from all over the web, based on their own business preferences, and deliver it to their consumers -- directly to their own site -- in their uniquely branded style, at the very moment their consumer is known to want it.
Doug McCormick, former Chairman and CEO of both Lifetime Entertainment and iVillage, is a Venture Partner with Rho Ventures, the lead investor in Vertical Acuity's Series B round. "It's critical for publishers of top tier editorial product to expand their reach and thus their importance to advertisers," McCormick observes. "So much of the Web's most thoughtful and useful content remains isolated behind a single site. Vertical Acuity is the first company that offers a no-risk proven solution to publishers that want to cross-collateralize their content throughout the entire Web." Mr. McCormick brings his valuable media industry perspective to his role on the Board of Directors for Vertical Acuity.
McCormick is joined on the Vertical Acuity Board by a dream team of industry leaders from all facets of the digital media world, including Betsy Morgan, most recently CEO of the Huffington Post. Prior to her leadership at the Huffington Post, Morgan was Senior Vice President for CBS Interactive and the General Manager of CBSNews.com. Rick Roth, founder and CEO of Roth Partners, has joined the Board as well, bringing his years of experience within the Ogilvy network to the team. Mr. Roth most recently served on the Worldwide Board of Ogilvy and as global CEO of OgilvyAction.
"At The Huffington Post, we created a new model around curating premium content but also realized that great content could be further monetized beyond the boundaries of any one site," notes Betsy Morgan. "Vertical Acuity has invented the technology and the business model which empowers publishers to maximize the value of both their content creation and curation skills – but this time on their own site with their own customers, as well as on any other site they choose."
Vertical Acuity was founded in 2008 by Gregg Freishtat, Paul Kaib and other members of Freishtat's previous companies Proficient Systems, Inc., and Vertical One Corporation. Proficient sold to LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) in June 2006 while Vertical One sold to S1 Corporation (NASDAQ: SONE) in 1999.
Today, Vertical Acuity tracks millions of content topics across a broad network of websites. The firm has secured relationships with media companies such as Hearst and Meredith and has deployed the technology on sites ranging from CBS and FOX affiliate stations, to Paste Magazine and others. To see the technology in action, visit www.verticalacuity.com.
CONTACTS:
Gregg Freishtat, CEO, 770-331-6156
Julie Davis Salisbury, Communications, 404-520-0383
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