Dan

Generate, Inc.

September 14, 2013 by

The meeting

From coffee-soaked idea to acquisition

The road to success started on a napkin, at a golf course, in a smoky bar…

Generate is one of those happy-ending startup stories Dan just loves to tell. Dan met twin entrepreneurs Tom and Darr Aley at a golf course, where a sketch was produced on a napkin. It was the basic interface concept behind what would become Generate g2—technology that solved the fundamental challenge of acquiring essential business, profiles, executives and relationships in a single view. G2 was business intelligence on steroids.

So first off, there needed to be some down-and-dirty branding and product front-end development—young Generate’s first suit, tie, and loafers! And Generate’s first corporate logo. Tom was carrying his bag to different venture capitalists to secure seed funding. He needed a basic look for his baby company. And the product interface needed to look professional. All this basic branding and interface design wound up in his PowerPoint presentation for pitching investors.

Dan made the brand green and crisp, like an apple. Generate was positioned as a premium business intelligence service empowered with a social-networking component. Its business intelligence database was real-time. It was like selling organic vegetables—the product had to be fresh to retain maximum value. The color green on white and black was simple, straightforward, and fresh. Organic, crispy intelligence just harvested from rich, black soil!

And Generate got funded!

After initial funding, the first year, Generate was in stealth mode. The team was immersed in building the product, while quietly wooing new customers and investors. Dan worked with the developers to create interface designs that could be built efficiently as scalable CSS templates for future expansion.Generate g2 had deep data on millions of companies and executives—and showed how the customer connected to them. The interface needed to be simple to use while offering business intelligence from our proprietary dynamic business databases.

One year later and Generate g2 was in place. It was time to take it to the stage. CEO Tom Aley began public introductions of Generate g2. Generate was a finalist at the American Business Awards as well as at the SIIA CODiE Awards. This got Dan to change hats at produce promotional materials: banner ads, a landing page, and print advertising. Also, an identity system for a line of data products that was evolving. And of course, alongside the product website, the marcom website was designed and built.Generate g2 was marketed across the United States. They were very active at trade events and were getting daily press exposure. There were trade shows to design for, webinars, presentations, animations, collateral, data sheets—the whole nine yards. Dan also was pushing the envelope by researching and developing techniques to visualize connection paths in better ways. And then…

Acquisition!

On Thursday, April 17, 2008, 11:00 a.m. Generate Inc. was acquired by Dow Jones and Company.

Success at last! Now the limitations of a startup were removed, and Generate had the resources of a major corporation to promote and develop our technology. It was the best outcome the Generators could hope for.

The acquisition meant that Dan would be part of an established brand and would need to understand it intuitively.

Awards

2008 Software and Information Industry Association CODiE Awards:
Best Content Aggregation ServiceBest Content Newcomer
Best Solution Integrating Content into Workflow
Best Business Productivity Solution
Best Online Business Information Service
Best Online News ServiceFinalist, 2008 Red Herring 100 AwardsInterface Design, Dow Jones g2
Finalist, 2008 SoftwareCEO Software Innovation Awards
Finalist, SBANE 2008 Innovation Awards
Finalist, 2008 SoftwareCEO Awards
Second Place, Top Innovator of 2007
2007 Information Today People’s Choice Awards
Second Place, Top Enterprise Application 2007 Information Today People’s Choice Awards
Finalist, 2007 American Business Awards

Dow Jones Sales Triggers

September 14, 2013 by

During Dan’s tenure as Creative Director at Dow Jones BRI, the business event triggers portion of our flagship product, Dow Jones g2, was being “mobilized”, as it were, for the iPhone. The mobile app was called Dow Jones Sales Triggers. Dan was responsible for the mobile app’s design, working with the internal resources at Dow Jones to deploy the app in a short period of time.

Building Engines

September 14, 2013 by

Building Engines creates software for building operations management professionals. the Building Engines property operations and workflow solution serves the needs of 180 enterprises, managing more than 3800 individual facilities and 400 million square feet of property. Building Engines’ Property and Tenant Management System allows customers to capture, communicate, assign and report on all the elements that impact the tenant experience by simplifying operational complexities and improving visibility, extracting information, and speeding tenant communications.

Dan was the consulting Creative Director responsible for redesigning and building in-house the company’s marcom website. He worked directly with management and marketing to customize the site to focus on easy accessibility to the industry’s best practices.

Property Hero

September 14, 2013 by

Property Hero is a property management Web application for desktop, mobile and tablets. It allows landlords to organize and manage their buildings efficiently. PropertyHero streamlines customers’ abilities to track tenant leases, rent payments, COI’s and contact information. It also allows them to manage building maintenance, service requests, to-do’s, and keep an active record of key dates. It can be accessed on a computer, tablet or smartphone.

Dan was the consulting Creative Director responsible for designing and building in-house the first product user interface from the ground up for mobile, iPad and web. He also worked with marketing on designing promotions and the new company website.

Bob consulted through Dan to build Property Hero’s mar-com website.

Moms & Jobs

September 14, 2013 by

Moms and Jobs—MoJo—was a Boston-based social venture whose objective was to address the issues facing poverty-stricken mothers. MoJo’s goal was to provide single mothers freedom from the strain of daycare costs and a new career path by enabling then with a new start in the apparel business. All proceeds from product sales were devoted to providing better-than-minimum-wage salaries, new career paths, and freedom from prohibitive daycare costs.

Dan was the Creative Director of Moms & Jobs. During his time there, he created the company brand (in two phases—”Original MoJo” that you see here, and later, “American MoJo), managed a vast array of product photography and model shoots, designed the commerce website, and conceived and designed the many seasonal product promotion campaigns.

The “Original MoJo” brand was the first incarnation of MoJo’s look-and-feel.

American MoJo

September 14, 2013 by

American MoJo was a Boston-based social responsibility venture whose objective was to address the issues facing poverty-stricken mothers. MoJo’s goal was to provide single mothers freedom from the strain of daycare costs and a new career path by enabling then with a new start in the apparel business. All proceeds from product sales were devoted to providing better-than-minimum-wage salaries, new career paths, and freedom from prohibitive daycare costs.

Dan was the Creative Director of American MoJo. During his time there, he created the company brand (in two phases—the original “Moms & Jobs” and later, “American MoJo), managed a vast array of product photography and model shoots, designed the commerce website, and conceived and designed the many seasonal product promotion campaigns.

The American MoJo brand was a reinvention of the “Original MoJo” look-and-feel that centered around keeping jobs in America.

Generate, Inc.

Dow Jones Sales Triggers

Building Engines

Property Hero

Moms & Jobs

American MoJo

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Dan

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