Editor's Letter - December 2007

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It is funny how serendipity, that transformative confluence of memories and connections and timing, plays out.

This month's cover story is a case in point. Several months ago, I went to UC Davis one evening to interview one of the founders of the internet at a forum. I walked around talking to local companies and met the vice president of marketing for a small software company in Granite Bay. My eyes started to glaze when she told me what the company did: software as a service for smaller high volume retailers.

I was thinking some kind of cash register software and started edging for the door when she added the phrase "price optimization". That got my attention. Many years ago I wrote about the world of "yield management," an information-technology innovation developed by the airline industry. It was used to price tickets based on the patterns and rhythms of ticket-buying behavior.

By utter chance I knew just what she was talking about, and the implications: This product could help level the playing field -- for instance, a corner store could see how much lowering the price of diapers meant in relation to increased baby food sales. Mundane, but fundamental to retail success, this has long been province of big companies. Now a local company was letting customers of all sizes seize their data, massage it and find patterns that could help the bottom line … and pay for it as a monthly service. This was the promise of computing in the first place: to make a business more successful, and, lest we forget, to do it more cheaply.

As a result of that chance meeting, one of our seasoned contributors, Michael Bowker, headed off to find out about the company and discovered a success story. Revionics is one of the Capitol region's many promising start-up companies, and a company to keep an eye on: As we went to press it announced another round of venture and investor funding. Since inception, Prosper has been celebrating these kinds of companies -- to read about 30 more take a look at our recap of three years of Baby Blue Chip profiles.

In these turbulent times, if it's banking, or bankruptcy, or buildings, you need advice about -- or just ideas for an olive business, or how to eat well and locally, or help in dreaming up a no-stress career as a ferryboat skipper -- you'll find it all in this issue.

And during this holiday season, may peace be with you.

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