As of six months ago Filtrbox had made a lot happen in a short amount of time. Filtrbox, which got its start as part of the TechStars class of 2007, had launched a product that they thought did a good job of addressing the problem of information overload on the Internet. Filtrbox allows users to set up key word “filtrs” that are used by the program to return articles from a multiplicity of internet news sources, including traditional media, blogs, and social media like twitter, which are then ranked on expected relevance. “Filtrbox helps you find the needle in the haystack.” says Patrick Cameron, Director of Sales and Marketing. “You tell us what you’re interested in and we deliver a qualified daily digest of the relevant articles created on the Internet.” he adds.
After a couple months on the market the company saw a good number of people using the product with generally positive reaction to what the product offered. What Filtrbox was not seeing was conversion rates, at least as high as they had hoped, from the free version of the product to the more feature rich pro version, which cost $20 per month. Simply put, Filtrbox ran into the problem that plagues many Internet companies – people don’t like to pay for web-based services. Filtrbox did identify four specific groups of business users who did seem to be converting to the paid version, which offered the ability to set an unlimited number of filtrs, at much higher rates. These user groups are:
- Individual investors and Private Equity who want to track what is being said about the companies they invest in rather than relying on the censored version that might be provided by the companies’ boards
- Sales people who want to be aware of potential leads as well as keep abreast of significant news coming from clients
- Marketing professionals who want to listen in on the conversation about their own product and those of competitors; this group in many cases was previously paying for more expensive enterprise solutions
- The Executive set who need to be on top of company, competitor and client news but have limited time to devote to the effort
The company has tailored its next product release – the G2 version which will be offered for $10 per month per user – to meet the needs of these user groups (main user dashboard shown below). Enhanced features include immediate feedback on the filtrs entered through providing a list of sample articles within seconds of entry. 
This feature can be important to ensure that the keywords the user sets are going to generate relevant results (e.g. if a user is interested in scrum software development, he really needs to set the filter to exclude rugby or else may be inundated with results from British sports blogs). The new version also gives users the ability to track data about how many hits each filtr is generating by day. While this data alone may not fully answer questions, as Cameron says “If you usually see 10 hits about a customer then all of sudden there are 100 one day, that is something you need to know and investigate.”
Another product feature is enhanced ability to share results including sharing filtrs and sharing specific results via Twitter. The sharing features have been particularly useful to sales teams who can all benefit from similar filtrs according to Cameron. Beyond just keeping up with current customers, Filtrbox also offers the opportunity for sales people to be more proactive by monitoring for companies that may be discussing problems that their product could address. The reach of Filtrbox into social media like Twitter is especially important in these cases, as well as for marketing, to keep up to the minute on the true conversation about a product.
In many ways, people are limited in the information they receive by the news sources they know (i.e. the websites they visit or subscribe to via RSS). Several current users have noted that Filtrbox has discovered new news sources for them through the filtrs they have set. While Filtrbox enables users to import their current RSS subscriptions and will give higher visibility to relevant articles from these sources their broad coverage helps the user systematically discover new sources with relevant content. The Filtrbox team believes this type of discovery can aid users in completing “proactive market intelligence” – a more active and evolved way of seeking out relevant information with little additional effort. Whether a user is researching a new market or competitor, by using Filtrbox they can be assured of a more complete search rather than the traditional approach of simply visiting the same industry publications and blogs that everyone reads.
The company’s focus is on viral growth of the product as the price point and limited sales team make a company to company approach infeasible. Through the new version the company hopes to expand the paying user base among the four target user groups. While Cameron does not expect users to stop setting personal filtrs monitoring the Red Sox or James Bond films anytime soon, Filtrbox hopes to be on its way to establishing itself as an important business tool with value far exceeding the $10 a month price tag.
