It's still who you know, and Daryl Scott has created a Web 2.0 way to know.

Daryl Scott has created AttaainCI, competitive intelligence software so awingly powerful that I told him after the first time I used it I felt I’d looked at the stars too long.

What AttaainCI does is provide any business of any kind all the competitive intelligence and market research on any company, industry, competitor, individual or investor they could ever need, and plenty more.  It tracks search results, press mentions, blog mentions, site traffic, omigosh, the list is endless.  A company can watch itself and know how it’s doing, and watch other companies to see how they’re doing. 

And it’s all online.  Individuals to enterprises only need an Internet connection to access all that data. 

What Daryl Scott did is have the programming expertise, the business knowledge, marketing savvy, and the mind to conceive of the idea, invent the software, and execute it as a product.

I read the review of Stephen Baker's The Numerati, in the Wall Street Journal, 9/15/08 and heard a recent interview with Stephen Baker on NPR.  Baker’s description of the mathematical and entrepreneurial minds that are creating data mining systems made me think, “Daryl Scott is The Local Numeratus!”

So Daryl Scott is a local guy--his company, Attaain, Inc. will be only one year old in January 2009--who has created a product, scalable to enterprise level, of value to local, national, and international markets.

He created it right here.

I know him because his company, Attaain, Inc., like my company that founded Handshake 2.0, is a member of business accelerator VT KnowledgeWorks. 

A local high-tech company has developed a product of such magnitude and universal market appeal that it could contribute to local economic development through job creation and bring further prestige to the area for innovative entrepreneurship.

Of local leaders’ dreams of the results of economic initiatives, Scott is the perfect example.

To read more about competitive intelligence software AttaainCI, feel free to read these posts on Inside VT KnowledgeWorks.

Daryl Scott is President and CEO of Attaain, Inc.  Attaain Inc. delivers “active intelligence for strategic advantage” with AttaainCI, the comprehensive web-based solution for researching, analyzing and real-time tracking of competitive intelligence and market intelligence about companies, people and markets crucial to the success of a business. The AttaainCI competitive intelligence system tracks key competitors, sales prospects, customers, potential partners, target markets, industry people and more, across single or multiple lines of business.

Handshake 2.0 recently learned that Vijay Singal writes an investment strategy blog, Beyond the Random Walk:  A not so random walk through the world of finance.

In this post, Singal lists a portfolio designed to use the Industry Momentum Trading Strategy which "takes advantage of the fact that well performing industry sectors tend to continue to perform better than the market in the near term."   He added, "The entry date for this portfolio is July 21, 2008; and the exit date is August 25, 2008."

An interesting comment exchange on his post follows:

Anne Clelland Says:
August 25, 2008 at 2:59 pm

Today’s the exit date! I’d be eager to hear what happens!

If it interests you to appeal to a general audience, would you be open to answering a few questions, answers to which might interest the readers of Handshake 2.0?

If so:

Is Beyond the Random Walk: A Guide to Stock Market Anomalies and Low-Risk Investing for experts or can the general population benefit from some of your findings? If so, what would be the layman’s “takeaways” from your book?

What is a layman’s description of what you are trying to do in your blog?

Thanks!

Vijay Singal Says:
September 1, 2008 at 8:36 pm

Anne:

I compute the returns about once a month because the calculations are quite time consuming. I hope to report the returns in the very near future.

My book, Beyond the Random Walk, is designed for the ordinary investor, but not for someone who has never traded before. Experts can also learn from reading the book. The book has several strategies where you can do better than the market because the price movements are predictable. For example, a positive earnings announcement is usually followed by positive returns over the next several days. More details are in the book.

My blog targets the same kind of person and shows the actual implementation of one strategy in my book.

Vijay

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Handshake 2.0 is very happy to know Vijay Singal and looks forward to those calculations!

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Vijay Singal, author of Beyond the Random Walk, is the Head of the Department of Finance and J. Gray Ferguson Professor of Finance, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech.  He is married to Manisha Singal, Internet business pioneer and Assistant Professor of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech.