Ten Years Later

Alacra, born Data Downlink Corporation, is ten years old today.  A few other companies that started within a few weeks of when we did include Financial Engines, Hollywood Stock Exchange, Infospace, Internet Capital, Intralinks and Soundview Technology Group (purchased by Schwab).  eBay was started a couple of months later. There's a long list of companies in the information space that started at the same time we did but didn't make it through the bust.  You may remember Triene, Amulet, Xigo, edatafinder, Sagemaker/Divine, to name a few.
  So why have we survived and succeeded?  Five reasons stand out.  First, we have been fortunate to hire terrific people and these terrific people have joined together to make an outstanding team.  This team has earned the respect of our customers and content partners and have created our excellent reputation in the marketplace.  Second, our angel investors who got us started and Dave Rutter, (then at Prebon now at BrokerTec) who gave us free office space for a year.  Third, when the going got tough during the Web 1.0 bust, our primary investors, Fred Wilson (then at Flatiron now Union Square Ventures) and the guys at Barra (Andrew Rudd, Kamal Duggirala, Jim Kirsner, Bruce Ledesma, Gregg Stockett) gave us tremendous support. Without them we wouldn't be here now.  Fourth, our content partners have really helped us build our business, especially the handful who helped us with our chicken and egg problem - getting content without having any customers.  This group included Greg Smith, then at Indepth Data now at Cicada, Tom Clarke, then at Technimetrics now at TheStreet.com and Mike Danson of Datamonitor.  Finally, our customers, whose names I can't mention but whose business we truly appreciate.  So I want to thank everyone for helping us get this far and say Happy Birthday.