Imagine your pager beeping every time the price of your favourite stock crashes or skryockets. Hard to believe? Not any more.
Triggered Events Inc., a Calgary startup company, offers a free stock price-alert service through its Web site, www.stocktrigger.com.
Once a stock, currency or mutual fund falls or rises within a previously specified price range, Stocktrigger software automatically notifies the subscriber through their e-mail, pager, digital cellphone or other Internet-capable hand-held wireless device, such as a Palm Pilot.
“We’re not breaking new ground in delivering this service,” said Vince Cryne, president of Triggered Events.
“Yahoo and other well known brands are in the . . . alert business. But they’re very limited in how they apply that model and they really only offer a very basic service. But the service, very definitely, is in demand. We’re going to reach a point in time when we won’t be able to work without our cellphones or our PDAs.”
Cryne said Triggered Events provides stock alerts to 10,000-15,000 subscribers worldwide. After receiving the alert, subscribers process transactions through their respective brokers.
This month, Triggered is expanding its service to offer paid subscriptions, for approximately $5 US per month.Current subscribers can continue to receive the free service, said Cryne, but they’ll likely have to settle for notifications that arrive 20 minutes after the price change occurs. Others who wish to monitor more stocks, or receive realtime alerts, will have to pay.
StockTrigger is the first of many alert services that Triggered Events plans to offer through hand-held wireless devices, commonly known as PDAs. Depending on how agreements with other service providers play out, Triggered could also alert subscribers on the availability of such time-sensitive services as golf tee times and airline flights.
“We’ll be talking to people who already provide the online booking service and attaching the engine to them — anything that is time sensitive, liquid inventory as it’s known in the business,” said Cryne. “Liquid inventory means it’s perishable. Once that tee-off time is gone, or once that aircraft seat has left the ground, it’s lost forever.”
John Jackman, Triggered Events’ chief executive officer, said the company will target the financial services industry first as it emphasizes a business-to-business strategy. Triggered Events will build a clientele in Calgary first and branch out in North America and then Asia and Europe within the next few months.
“We’re not going to be a $100-million (company) next year,” said Cryne, declining to disclose financial goals. “I assure you of that. But we’re certainly going to be providing a very healthy return, within a reasonable time, on a serious investment.”
Jackman said that, in addition to its individual subscribers, the company has six business clients that are linked to different industries.
“There’s just a plethora of applications that can utilize this kind of technology,” said Jackman. The private corporation was formed in March of 2000, after its founders acquired the StockTrigger.com software from its creator.
Cryne and Jackman are employees who also have stock options. Cryne said Triggered Events consists of 30 investors but, citing their bosses’ request for privacy, he and Jackman declined to identify the company founders or other owners.
Jackman said the owners put up seed money and a first round of investing has been completed. No other investment rounds are planned and the company has no plans to go public.
Cryne said he and Jackman were hired to make the unidentified founders’ dream a reality.
“Oftentimes it’s beneficial, frankly, to bring in a quality management team that’s not necessarily the founders, per se, of the idea,” said Jackman, adding outsiders tend to be more objective. “The reason for that is . . . the founders can be a bit emotionally attached to an idea. Vince and I have the business expertise.”
But Cryne, 42, and Jackman, 29, aren’t exactly two peas in a pod.
Cryne, who was born and raised in Manchester, England, moved to Calgary in the early 1980s. Before joining Triggered Events, he served as a Calgary-based consultant with Carlson Marketing of Minneapolis.
“On a personal level, I knew that I had to get on to the client side in one fashion or another because, typically, when you’re a consultant so long, you’re never able to reap the rewards and see what did happen because you move on to the next project,” said Cryne.
“This project presented itself very nicely. Although I’m not a techie by nature, I’m also very excited about new technology and I’m very quick to embrace new technology that becomes available.”
Jackman was born and raised in San Diego. He obtained a master’s degree in International Business in 1997 from the American Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Ariz., where he met a Calgary woman. They married, moved here, and Jackman worked in corporate finance for a year-and-a-half. He then became a venture capitalist, representing a small group of Calgary and California-based investors.
At first glance, you would probably guess that the clean-cut Jackman is a dot-com executive. However, unlike some of his peers, he prefers slow, steady growth versus overnight riches. Despite his conservative philosophy, however, Jackman isn’t frightened by the recent sharp downturn in technology stock prices. He still believes that the Internet offers huge profit potential.
“As a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, you can’t be worried day-to-day about what’s going on in the stock market,” said Jackman.
Tom Seto, the University of Calgary’s manager of network services, whose job includes identifying new technology for widespread use, said there’s a huge potential for StockTrigger and other wireless alert services.
He said most investment companies already offer stock price alerts on their Web sites, which have timers that refresh appropriate pages every few minutes, but services that transmit messages through hand-held devices are still limited.
“I think this (type of alert service) will be very prevalent,” said Seto, who’s been testing new technology at the U of C for more than two decades. “This stuff is not hard to do. You have to have the link to the database. The last step of getting (information) to the wireless (device) is an evolutionary type of thing.”
