Bill Vick, President of XtremeRecruiting.org Interviews Steven Morgan, CEO and Founder CardBrowser

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STEVEN MORGAN: Thank you Bill.

STEVEN MORGAN: Well, Iıll start with the 20,000 foot view. CardBrowser attends the niche and Major trade shows in the software and IT industry globally - in Europe, Canada, Asia, throughout the United States - and we collect business cards from C-level (i.e. CEO), sales and marketing executives, who work for software and technology companies. We upload those business cards to a searchable database on the Web. The (CardBrowser) database is accessed by high tech employers and high tech search firms. We got into this business almost by accident so I canıt say much about how our vision or direction has changed since we did not originally set out to provide this service. Our company was founded as a research and development firm, working on various projects in the software industry. We had a few of our large software publisher clients ask us if we could get involved with some special project work and help them identify passive candidates in sales ­ candidates who were not available on the Internet job boards. That special work was for us to go to specific trade shows and network, shake hands and collect business cards from individuals who work for specific companies. From providing that service, we conceived of CardBrowser as a commercial service and refined it and brought it to where it is today - which is a very scaleable service that weıre delivering to a large number of customers.

Well, we donıt necessarily consider ourselves to be a list rental company. We're providing this service more as a networking service. If you look at companies like an Info USA and clearly there are many other companies playing in that market, they provide what is largely unusable data to employers and search firms with respect to recruiting. Now, certainly, you can argue that it is useable for marketing purposes, using for lead generations for direct mail. But, with respect to recruiting, recruiters need access to information that is going to place them in direct contact with the people who they aspire to speak with and that could be folks who are running companies, folks who are running shows, VP's of Sales, VP's of Marketing or candidates. When you look at the information thatıs provided by a list from Info USA or some of these other companies, you generally are getting the 262-9000 phone number, the direct corporate number, where you still have to navigate through a company and still need to talk to a ? and hunt and chase to finally get somebody on the phone. Many times people provide their adminıs phone number, their adminıs email address (if u even get an email address, which you usually donıt get from those lists). If you look at what we're doing, we're providing people with the most authentic form of information, which is the business card. Business cards donıt lie and business cards place you in direct contact with people. Business cards have email addresses, they have direct dial phone numbers, they have remote office phone numbers, they have cell phone numbers. When was the last time you saw a list rental company providing cell phone numbers? The idea behind the business card is for me to hand you information that will place you back in touch with me. So, it is a clear variation between what we are doing and what those companies are doing.

STEVEN MORGAN: Well right now, we host 17,000 business cards. We collect approximately 2,000-4,000 business cards on a monthly basis depending upon the month. There are some months like for instance June and October, where thereıs an extremely large number of shows compared to other months. But, on average, those are some of the numbers. When we are at those events, the only discrimination on our part is that we're talking specifically to the vendors and the exhibitors, so the people who are on the software and IT side of the fence are not necessarily the buyers who are there looking at technology and looking to buy technology. When it comes to who weıre networking with at the events, it ranges. When we go to an event, like say a Comdex or a NetWorld + Interop or some of the really large events, for the most part we're coming in contact with marketing managers, people who run booths. But that only represents a tiny fraction of the events we attend. We are predominantly out at the smaller niche events in security, in data warehousing, CRM, etc. - practically every sector of the industry. And, we see a turn out of the better sales professionals in the organization, a lot of sales professionals who have focused on specific vertical markets that map to the show. We go to a lot of government events so there is no surprise that we find people who sell specifically to the army or the navy or they manage DOD contracts. So, these are people who are generally really hard to get a hold of and people who are hard to single out. I would say from a position stand point, if I had to give you a number of labels I would say direct sales, channel sales, business development, OEM sales, international sales, business development, alliance managers, VP's of Marketing, VP's of Sales, product managers, a lot of pre-sales engineers, pre-sales consultants. And then, we do see a smattering of professional services and consulting and implementation people.

STEVEN MORGAN: No, not really. I donıt think we are going to go there. I think there will be probably be other folks who are going to enter the market. Weıre almost taking the opposite approach here from the job board market. If you look at the job board market, it started out with Monster and Hot Jobs and lots of other companies who generally focus broadly across multiple industries, multiple position types, etc. And then, over time as that market matures and evolves, you have a lot of niche players come in and organize around specific industries. And generally speaking, it is my opinion and the opinion of employment managers and folks who are running search firms, that the niche job boards do a better job producing better candidates ­ translating into better value for the dollar. So what we're doing here is we're pioneering around the concept of business cards as a (online) data format and creating a network around business cards. But, we're entering the market organized around the niche because we believe that to be successful, you have to focus on the niche. That said, it is a very, very, very large niche market. The software/IT industry across all the many vertical markets is very large and we're going to stay focused on that industry and continue to go a mile deep and just kind of stay an inch wide.

STEVEN MORGAN: Well, I think that what's happened in the search firm market place is that it kind of normalized. I think that search firms provide an invaluable service, and I think they'll be around forever. And, there will always be a place and need for search firms. We saw an explosion of new search firms over probably a 4-5 year period, as the Internet boomed, hit us and we had a lot, a lot of money around technology start ups. And, with all that new money coming into the Internet and the technology companies, you had a lot of new recruitment agencies opening up and subsequently closing down, but the strong, mature firms are still standing. We are working with a lot of them. They've been able to survive this down turn. I believe they will thrive when the market turns up. There will probably be fewer new entrants in as far as search firms, but I think it's going to have longevity. So, how do we fit in? Well, there are cycles. The search firm market, like other markets are cyclical and right now most search firms who I speak to, are more focused on business development, generating new accounts, new relationships, as opposed to searching for candidates, although thatıs still the cornerstone of what they do. So, our clients right now, our search firm clients, are using CardBrowser to fit in with their business development. They are using it to reach out to new presidents and new C-level contacts and EVPıs who they haven't talked to before and they don't have a relationship with. CardBrowser puts them in touch with these people. Over time, as the market starts to turn - and I hope itıs good for all the search firms we're working with - I think there will be more of a focus on candidate searching and using our tool for that.

STEVEN MORGAN: Well, it's interesting that you ask that and it kind of gets back to the question you asked earlier about the difference between us and list rental companies. If you think about a business card (look at your business card and I'll look at mine right now) it would likely survive your employment. There's information on the business card that puts you in touch with people even after they leave an employer, like for instance, my business card has my cell phone number on it. A lot of people have a direct dial to a remote office so, what we do is we date stamp everyone of the business cards that we collect. So, when you search our database you can see the specific day that we collected the card and which event we collected the card from. But we donıt delete any of the cards, we archive them. Once a week, every Wednesday night at midnight, for about a 5 or 6 hour period, there is an e-mail validation program run on our database and it goes out and flags all the bad e-mail addresses that are no longer valid. And, it identifies in our database which ones aren't valid. When somebody runs a search on our database, they can see either all of the contacts or only the contacts that are currently valid. There are certain position types when somebody is recruiting for a country manager in Latin America, thatıs a really hard position to find. And maybe there's a business card, and the phone number may not be good- the main phone number, but the cell phoneıs still active and youıre still able to get in touch with that person. It's information that search firms are still interested in or an employer might be interested in. So that's our methodology: we archive everything, we make it available by date, you don't have to look at it if you don't want to; but if you are conducting certain searches in certain areas, we will let you look at that data where we know the e-mail addresses are no longer valid. In as far as the database size, weıre anticipating for this year, the year of 2003, acquisition of a total of about 20,000 business cards. We expect that number will grow next year by probably 50%. Itıs important that I point out our event calendar, which you can find on our website, has been constructed exclusively by our clients. So we go to more events as a function of signing on more clients, who tell us that they'd like to see us at this event or that event. The market is so huge, and we do everything we can to research all the events. We're talking to all our clients and it is going to come from the client-base and as it gets larger we'll find out about more new events and we'll be there. In 2002, we went to eighty events, this year we'll be at 130 events just to give you a comparison between this year and last year.

STEVEN MORGAN: They could visit us on the web, at www.cardbrowser.com. Or, they can dial us at (631) 262 9100 x 209.

STEVEN MORGAN: Okay. Well, I appreciate it and thank you for having me today, Bill.