Friday, October 24, 2008

Ticklr wants to be your 411 source for friends

By Christopher Calnan

The former marketing executive at three local security companies plans to launch next year a beta version of a personal relationship management tool for businesspeople, and has taken in a scant $150,000 in funding to get to that stage.

Brian Gladstein, previously director of marketing at Cambridge’s Bit9 Inc., is scheduled to launch a private beta test of the web-based product developed by Ticklr Inc., a Waltham-based company he helped found that’s been testing an early version since September.

He declined to release all the details about the company and its product, but said it functions as a more sophisticated Google Alerts. He expects it to be most popular with salespeople wanting automated updates of people and companies in their address books.

“If you could create a (customer relationship management) for your personal relationships, that would be a good description (of Ticklr),” Gladstein said. “This is something we spend a lot of time doing as businesspeople.”

Founded in January, Ticklr reported a $150,000 sale of convertible promissory notes in late August, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has attracted four investors.

Gladstein said the company received funding from friends and family, but he declined to disclose the amount. He expects to market Ticklr to individuals rather than corporations and generate revenue through monthly subscriptions.

Ticklr focuses on the social side of business rather than the transactional side of conventional CRM systems, said Len Couture, the New England-based managing director of the CIO practice for Bluewolf Inc., a New York consultancy.

Several companies already develop business networking products, including Zoom Information Inc., based in Waltham; Concord-based OneSource Information Services Inc.; Texas-based Hoover’s Inc.; and California’s InsideView Inc. And Bedford-based iLantern LLC has a product that produces e-mail updates notifying people of changes within customers’ companies.

In addition to Bit9, Gladstein has led marketing for Burlington-based Relicore Inc. and Bedford’s RSA Security, which was acquired by Hopkinton’s EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) in 2006 for $2.1 billion. Early in his career, Gladstein worked at WebLine Communications Corp. of Burlington.

He founded Ticklr with Ryan Schuft and Stephen Quatrano, who hired Gladstein while at WebLine, acquired in 1999 by Cisco Systems Inc. for $325 million.