The Guidewire Report: A Bit Old Media, Don't You Think?

Got an email this afternoon:

Good afternoon!

I’m delighted to announce the launch of "The Guidewire Report," our twice-monthly analysis of emerging markets and companies, written expressly for the investors, executives, and entrepreneurs who are shaping the global innovation ecosystem.

For some time now, our colleagues from around the world have been asking for a digest of the most noteworthy and promising of the hundreds of companies we meet each year. And that's exactly what we'll deliver. Each issue opens with our analysis of current market trends, followed by brief profiles of companies that are coming to market. We map these companies against the Guidewire Group taxonomy to reveal movements in the market. We hope you will find the first issue an interesting one; click here to download your complimentary copy.

Because you have been a friend of Guidewire Group and a valued colleague, we’d also like to offer you a special invitation to become a regular subscriber at a charter rate of $1,495 (more than 50% off the 12 month subscription/24 issues price). This invitation is valid for a limited time only, so please take a moment to visit our website for more details .

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks and best regards,

Chris

Chris Shipley
Co-founder and Global Research Director
Guidewire Group
600 Townsend Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
USA

Wow. For only $1495/year (50% off what would otherwise be almost $3000!) I can get a digest of info on companies.

Wait a second: I thought that was what we are doing, here, on the web. For free.

Maybe I should start charging for this stuff. Oh, wait: that was before the Web.

tags: guidewire+group, guidewire+report, old+media

Comments

[Matt Terenzio]

And yet, after just a few subscribers they are breaking even. Then they can reduce production costs by aggregating TechCrunch feeds.

The sad thing is that if you work in an old-school corporation, you probably know a few subscription candidates. I do. I work for Tribune, by the way, until podosphere.com gets off the ground. ; )

[Lars Plougmann]

That works out at $125 per issue. The only thing I subscribe to in paper format is The Economist, at less than the price of a beer per issue, including web access to ten years of their archives.

[Scott Rafer]

Hi Stowe, You're kidding, right? You do charge for this stuff -- except your business doesn't scale.

You provide a more intensive version of very similar services to your consulting clients. And, the buzz would say you do a rather good job of it, which is why Chris and Mike had you speak at their BlogOn conference.

I'm on Guidewire's board of advisors and was privy to the thought process leading up to this service launch. All they did at Guidewire was the same thing you, they, and I tell our clients, "Ours is not to reason why, just to sell 'em what they wanna buy wanna buy."

Over the past year or so, hundreds of early-stage investors, BigCo/SmallCO execs, entrepreneurs, et al, have expressed a need to Guidewire, "I don't have time to read thousands of blog posts, I'm sick of seeing yet another dozen posts about whatever the breaking news of the day happens to be, and you [Chris Shipley and Guidewire Group] know what information helps me make decisions. Can you please provide me a time-efficient, predictable way for me to find out about the companies you meet and the trends you see?" Mike, whose job it is to create revenue around Chris' editorial, started asking, "Would you pay for it? How much?" The Guidewire Report is the result of their detailed product marketing and is exactly what their customers wanted.

When you poke fun at the Report, you aren't taking a crack at Guidewire, you are taking a crack at the hundreds of folks who asked them to produce exactly the product they did. In the interest of even-handedness, you might also consider linking to the sample copy they provided so that your readers can judge for themselves.

[Oliver Starr]

Stowe, did you run out of ideas today? I have to ask because what you've written above is nothing more than nonsense. To blithely suggest that "by aggregating TechCrunch's Feed" Guidewire could improve profit margins may have been tongue in cheek but I personally found it insulting in the extreme.

Why? While I appreciate TechCrunch and value the news that Michael breaks, the principal reason I left MobileCrunch and joined Guidewire was for the simple reason that Mike wants short, snappy posts about breaking news. I am an analyst and want to put that news and the companies that will influence or be influenced by those events into some sort of meaningful context.

You know; where you do more than report the facts of an incident and help the reader understand what this might mean to him or her, how it will make his life better or her fuel bill higher- in other words the details that give the reader the added value of perspective based upon applying a lens of knowledge and experience to a topic and then evaluating what has just happened in the context of that lens.

For you to make a comment like that about people that have consistently provided entrepreneurs with a platform to be recognized by investors, journalists and ultimatley the public for nearly the last twenty years is not only shortsighted, it's rude. You yourself have been a direct beneficiary of Guidewire's generousity more than once, and clearly you have no compunction about taking a paycheck for writing your own analysis on an array of topics - I know - I've seen your work.

Personally, I'd suggest that before you start throwing stones of this sort you make sure that you don't have any exposed walls of glass hanging out there just inviting a shot. Just remember, it's a small world we live and work in; populated by lots of smart people with long memories and archived email and documents. I think you owe the entire Guidewire team an apology both for your original comment and the Arrington feed jab. It's not so hard to treat people graciously - especially those that have been exceedingly good to you. I think if you take a moment to reconsider your position, you'll realize that Chris and company are certainly in that number and deserve better than your offhand and unfair comments.

Oliver Starr, Senior Analyst; Mobile
Guidewire Group
http://guidewireconnection.com/oliver-starr