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ASP - Thursday, December 22, 2005

Vision Critical = MarketResearch 2.0 + Canada's Reid Family

HQ: Vancouver, Canada

Founded: 2001

Management: The company is run by the Canadian Reid clan. CEO is Angus Reid. From 1979 to 2001, he was founder and CEO of the Angus Reid Group. He sold this company for $100M to Paris based Ipsos in 2000 - at the time the company had revenues of $60M. His lil' bro Andrew Reid is President and his lil' sister Jennifer is SVP.

Investors: In December 2005, the company raised $3M in venture capital funding, led by returning investor TELUS Ventures. Vision Critical had raised $3M in 2004.

Business Model: The company sells Web-based market research. One is an ASP for storing and managing surveys and research. The other is a rich media suite of applications to view research findings. Clients include: Proctor & Gamble, Nokia, Nestle Purina, the National Hockey League, Scotiabank, Virgin Mobile, Monster.com and Coca Cola.

Users Can Envision The Store Shelf

Competitors: eThink Group.

Dirt: We are not big fans of market research, but there is plenty of money to be made there and it makes sense that Internet products for market research will find buyers. It is surprising that the company doesn't have more serious competition.