Jigsaw, a company that I have begged our elected representatives to do something to stop, continues to see skyrocketing growth and managed to convince Austin Ventures to lead a $12 Million series B round of financing. Previous investors El Dorado Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners also participated.
One of my best friends, Tom Ball, has joined their board of directors, which makes our conversations about the company somewhat lively to say the least. All I ask of you is this, Tom – at least try to convince Jigsaw to allow people to get their personal information out of the database so that it cannot be purchased by anyone who visits the site. Jigsaw isn’t the most evil company on the Internet by far, but it is the most evil company funded by well known and respected venture investors. There should be more to an investment decision than the bottom line profitability potential of a company. Its cost to society should be factored in as well.
Mike, I agree with you 100% that this company is evil, but why do you keep writing about them? You are sending them a lot of traffic and that only helps them in the long run, right?
Hi Kirk – Yes, I know. But ethically-challenged sales professionals already know about jigsaw. I want to try to raise the awareness of the company with others, too, so that maybe, at least, they’ll allow people a way to get their personal contact data out of the jigsaw system.
there are people out there who will do anything to become rich. obviously they don’t care about anything but money.
Welcome to the Capitalist economic model.
I agree.
you should fight, especially if you know the funding ones.
I propose that you put the link to a protest page with a petition.
If a lot of people link that way we may be in good position in google.
That’s Internet fight.
By luck i’m not in it !
Why not just put a lot of completely false entries on their site? They don’t seem to have any checking mechanism.
OK. Lets assume you have the contact details of Larry, Sergey, Ballmer and so on. So what? Are you going to spam these people?! Do you think to make business with them?! Look at the contact details of Larry Page at Jigsaw. You´ll find larry.page@google.com
I don´t need Jigsaw for this information.
So, Jigsaw is, like Michael has written, a tool for “ethically-challenged sales professionals”.
I mean this with all sincerity so please don’t take offense. But I don’t understand how the take on this company differs from the “all content should be free” attitude when it comes to music. Maybe Mike doesn’t have that same philosophy (i think Nik mentioned it during the AllTunes review) but I have trouble seeing how these can be resolved.
If a musician’s work is distributed without their consent is that any different than a person’s contact information being shared freely? You might argue that the person’s work contact info was only given to an individual through consent with the belief that it was private information. Yet, a musician selling his product can explicitly state that it is not the intention to have the music distributed freely, so I don’t really see a difference.
This isn’t to say that it can’t be resolved, I am just having trouble with the rationale behind it. Would love to hear what I am missing.
thanks!
It is quite ironic that you not only fully support a most likely, in the USA, illegal web service like AllOfMP3 but even encourage it’s use; yet act as if Jigsaw, whom I also think is ethically, though not legally, wrong, is the devil incarnate.
Is this possibly due to the fact that you don’t mind AllOfMP3 stealing other’s Intellectual Property becasue you aren’t a musician but it does bother you when someone tries to take away your “privacy”? Why the vast difference in opinions about two shady practices?
To Comment #5:
The “capitalist” economy model that you sarcastically bash is the reason we have such magical and wonderful things as the Web today.
It’s called innovation and incentive. Do you think anybody would really use the Web, other than academics, if there were no money to be made from it?
Granted the JigSaw folks are douchebags, it is only expected to have companies who are the proverbial “black sheep”.
But, of course, I’m sure Communists and Socialists don’t know about such things.
Maybe the difference is that Jigsaw is out to exploit anybody and everybody, and their business model does nothing except line their own pockets. Alltunes/Allofmp3 on the other hand arguably only exploit the 5,000 or so musicians whose works appear on their site. Additionally, the Alltunes business model seeks to address the huge rip-of that is the entertainment industry whose sole aim is to maximize their profits and deny customers their fair rights. Sure you can argue that Alltunes is still ethically wrong, but only because the music industry won’t play ball. I mean look at iTunes… 79 pence ($1.27) for a single track that you’re only allowed to play on an ‘authorized’ PC or iPod? If you guys want to bend over and drop your pants for the music industry… be my guest.
This kind of thing is definetely concerning. I can just see people offloading their act databases into it.
Amongst all of this, its funny that Jigsaw, on their own site, links back to TechCrunch – it even lists the post name: “Jigsaw is a Really, Really Bad Idea.”
check it:
http://www.jigs.../InTheNews.html
Most of these firms are evil. Even the pretty boy, Linked-in gives all their community user’s details to paying members regardless of whether they are private or on your connections list. They all suck.
I’ve got to stick up for Jigsaw.
First, let me clarify that Jigsaw only keeps business contacts. While they do strive to have full contact information, including a direct phone line, email and physical address, it is only business contact info they don’t track any personal info or cell phone numbers.
Second, Jigsaw reduces the total number of cold calls that are made because their database lets salesman triangulate who the decision-maker at the firm is with out having to place multiple calls because it allows users understand the company’s employment hierarchy before purchasing any contacts. Understanding whether or not a salesman should be speaking with an engineer, manager, director or VP makes the cold calls much more efficient. My estimate is that this reduces the number of calls per company from about 9-10 down to 2-3. Furthermore, Jigsaw is priced accordingly to this value and salesman who want to place lots of untargeted calls would be better off buying data from Hoovers.
Third, it was mentioned in the previous post that Jigsaw’s model was only sustainable because they shift their cost of production on to their user by paying for contact information. Well, this may be true but isn’t user generated content one of the hallmarks of web 2.0? Where would Blogger be without pushing production costs onto its user base?
Lastly, keep mind that for companies selling B2B products cold calling is absolutely essential. In fact, inside sales is almost always one of the first hires after receiving its seed or series A funding. The bottom line is that B2B sales get done over the phone. Where would the Silicon Valley economy be with out cold calling?
I use Jigsaw and I highly recommend it. I don’t think there is anything evil about the company.
Mike, last time you did a post about jigsaw you ended up closing the thing. How come you are bringing it up again? Everyone understands your personal view, enough said.
Jigsaw is going to continue to scale. They appeal to a large niche. That said, i wish the best for jigsaw. user generated contacts is a hot item. Controlled and regulated by the users themselves. I see this as a win win..
P.S. Was this post some sort of joke?
You think helping to sustain the practice of cold calling makes this a legitimate venture?
Here’s a tip — I never, ever, deal with cold callers. I don’t care who they are or what they’re offering. If I want something, I find it, I don’t expect some worthless sales schmuck to anticipate my needs.
Cold calling isn’t essential. It’s obnoxious and a waste of my time and your resources. Spend the money on a decent advertising campaign and give service when a paying customer wants it. All cold calling does is cost you my business.
Glad to see you are toning down your retoric, Michael.
Let’s “beg our elective officials” to solve something of importance other than going after Jigsaw! Give a call to D&B – they have more data that you wouldn’t want them to have than any company out there. Remember Abacus? Yahoo has scads of data we don’t want to know they are selling – look how they bend over backwards to put Chinese dissedents in jail. No outrage over that?
I think that Jigsaw linked back to Techcrunch because they feel like they have nothing to hide. In the world of buying and selling data, this is a yawn.
I’m with Blurt. It’s ridiculous. We should have to opt in to this kind of crap, not opt out.
Somehow I think Mike is actually in on the biz or he wouldn’t be giving them the visibility.
In response to #20 (Blurt Reynolds)-
You don’t respond to cold callers. Neither do I.
But when you hire a sales team to grow your product, take a guess at what the most effective thing they could spend their time on to expand your customer base? Cold calling still works– and unless you have the luxury of having a product that grows in a viral way or have an enormous marketing budget, cold calling is the quickest and cheapest way to generate sales leads. Period.
Jigsaw is definately iffy. But go to http://www.hoov...free/tools/bel/ (Hoover’s “Build an Executive List”) – this kind of data is nothing new.
Tony – you think cold-calling is the most effective thing your sales team can do?
Gimme a break.
The best thing they can do (assuming you have a great product to begin with) is start by contacting warm leads (people they know).
Build a legitimate referral system so that people who *love* your product can tell other people about it.
No cold calling necessary. When I get calls like that it gives me the creeps. (Luckily, not too many people have my cell #.)
If Jigsaw is evil, then you have to add more to the list. They are offering a service similar to LinkedIn, Orkut, etc but to a niche domain. I see you have almost a dozen posts about Riya. But you do not find it evil, even when people can upload pictures of other people, tag them and publish them to the world.
Time wounds all heels.
Stew Leonard’s, a habitual on Fortune’s list of Best Companies to work for, and also one of the prime role models in Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence some years back has a rock at the entrance to the store. On the rock it says:
“Rule #1 – The customer is always right.
Rule #2 – If the customer is wrong, refer to rule #1.
While obviously not quite that simplistic, directionally we think this philosophy is much more right than wrong.
It is true that every once in the while you get someone who, for lack of a better term, has real “issues” and clearly needs to take advantage of whatever outpatient psychiatric benefit they may have, but far more often than not, when a customer has a complaint it can be resolved, and even if they are “technically” wrong, you buy much more than you save by making an accommodation.
We have been in business for 18+ years, and one of the things of which we are most proud is that to this day, the vast majority of our membership comes by referral from current or former members. We believe that this is a direct result of the fact that we have already treated our customers as members, not subscribers. They understand, remember, and appreciate the difference.
I think the concept is great too but the people behind the site http://www.willyloman.com are the ones that are going to do well.
Willy is totally free and based on P2P. The concept is the same where you upload your contacts into the system but with http://www.WillyLoman.com you get 5 contacts for every one uploaded versus just a 2 for 1 exchange in Jigssaw.com and others. I have used them all and found WillyLoman.com to have the best information (and its free), I just wish they had more of it. They are a little newer so they don’t have as many contacts but that will change real quick I suppose
I can’t tell you how many times my cold call has helped someone solve an issue they were stuggling with. IT managers don’t always have the time to research products to solve issues and usually I’m with a tech company selling a new product or technology that hasn’t hit mainstream yet. I’m a technologist at heart and love selling technology and telling people about new technology. I’m not calling people to sell them something they don’t need and IT Management usually has enough backbone to not buy something they don’t need. I just want 5-10 minutes of someones time to tell them about a technology. If they find it of interest, great, if not, tell me nicely that you don’t see a fit and I’ll move on. Sales is a tough and thankless job and I think that some bad and greedy sales people have given the rest of us a bad rap. I just want to help connect companies with technology and services that will help them. I only sell reputable solultions. I love being helpful and my trade-mark is great customer service. Every company that I’ve worked for would have died without cold calling. They are start-ups that don’t have Cisco’s budget for marketing but have products that far exceed the quality & functionality of the competitive Cisco products. I love selling great technology and helping solve real issues. Sorry if you hate receiving cold calls. I wish I could be in your shoes but I don’t have enough technical skills to do so. I will always treat IT professionals with the upmost respect and I just ask that you do the same for sales people until they cross the line. Please don’t assume we are all the same. Thanks
You complainers sound like some government agency “limit it – control it – freedom is evil!” Or, perhaps as bad: “I am so busy and important, and I know everything about this technology, so I don’t want to waste time talking to any sales robots.”
Leave Jigsaw out of this fight. They sell publicly-available information, just like others sell doughnuts and coffee. This info is not even a close call.
You are pissed because you love your privacy.
Fine, just quit your job. Don’t confuse your position in some private business enterprise with you, as in “your self”. No sales robot is calling because you are you. Sales Robots are calling because you are an executive with a budget to spend. We’re not your buddies or your friends. We just sell crap to your competitors and everybody else. If you don’t need any, don’t answer or hang up. We can take it. Or,
if you need some, buy some. Just like gasoline or food or computers or bandwidth.
Otherwise, perhaps we should collectively criminalize or regulate and over-tax the little piece of technology or service you sell! Then, you won’t be a business decision-maker worth contacting anymore. Then, Jigsaw won’t sell your contact info!
America is a Cold Calling nation, we do it from everything from money to sex. We invested the practice and are masters of it today.
Have pride in the fact we love to sell, even if you aint buying(today). Jigsaw rocks and gives me the chance to call more directed targets of my IT services, without asking four other people in your own company for your name.
Proud Enterprise Account Manager
I am a user of Jigsaw, and have found that their data basically contains the same information that is on their business card, or which can be found in Hoovers. On the other hand, my step-daughter found her driver’s license info on the internet…what’s more evil?
How the information is used should be a factor of the user’s integrity. Generally we contact a new prospect by e-mail or mail prior to actually calling them. And…most of the time the information in Jigsaw is out-of-date or erroneous. We may drop it for this reason.
another thing…I am also a musician, and have never downloaded music for free, and discourage anyone from doing so. That is basically stealing. Knowing who I am and where I work is not anywhere as serious as someone downloading my music and distributing it without any compensation to me for the time, creativity, and expense that went into my recording.
Unfortunately, cold calling works. I find deals all the time by calling although it is not the funnest way to spend a morning. Some products cannot be sold through referrals or by a marketing budget because they are very niche oriented. I agree with Sales Robot- the directors and vps I talk to are usually quite helpful and interested in new technology.
Exactly, the people complaining here about sales calls are more technology oriented than business oriented.
How is Jigsaw any different from any of the other Business Information services out there, like infoUSA or Hoovers? Salespeople need to sell in order to make a living, companies need to sell in order to stay afloat. That’s what our economy is all about.
Sure, receiving a sales call can be annoying, but it’s necessary. It’s what greases our economy. It’s what makes our society. Get rid of salespeople and we’ll plunge into the dark age.
Let’s be realistic here.
Blurt and Tony: Tony, hats off for having the conviction of your opinion to use your real name.
Not sure how I feel about Jigsaw, not much there that isn’t in many other places. Also, isn’t business contact information property of your company? There is your name but again, many places to find that. I don’t see it as much more than electronic business card sharing, I have a draw full or cards shared with me by other sales people. Sure I never paid for them and I’m not now, Jigsaw manages these contacts that’s what I pay for. Where is the ethitical issue, and I asked that open minded.
As aside to the base subject:
Blurt: no sales = no revenue = no job for you (worthless sales schmuck indeed)
Cold calling is a fact of life not just in sales but in business. So you never take a cold call regardless of your interest level? Well that seems pretty self limiting, oh well no big deal, in the scheme of things it’s not even a bump on a knats head.
I don’t know the real number but if it’s 1 in 10 or 1 in 50 who might take a cold call, no matter, thats the one I’m interested in finding. We also network, build relationships, work to learn the customers business and real needs, all in an attempt to bring value from our business to yours which starts with awareness of your business and then ours. Most sales people have this in mind, most are coin operated as well, I agree. But who isn’t? Sales people just have to find ways to get the coins for them and you. Most also know the big coin and consistent coin means doing the right thing for the customer. By the way I think I’m safe in assuming most sales people hate to cold call, but shall I sit by the phone and wait for it to ring while my competitors call? Or my company gets as big enough to have a multi million dollar marketing budget? How would they get there? I better try to market the company myself for now, hense some cold, luke warm, warm, very warm, calling.
I have been an engineer and in purchasing before sales. Took every call that came to my phone, and returned every voice message. Some I had to almost hang up on but didn’t. The older I get the more I know what I don’t know and where I might learn something should have no self imposed limitations. If you intimidated by sales we then I guess I can understand. But what I hear you saying is; you already know everything or can do it all yourself, which to me is the greatest self limitation of all.
Marketing instead of cold calling, what like Microsoft has? IBM, HP maybe. If business world followed your lead ot would be the end to free enterprise and NEW companies to compete with Microsoft, IBM, HP etc…Oh by the way, friends at IBM, HP, MS, etc.. cold call too! Sales managment, senior account managers don’t, they beat up reps to do it…
Lastly, I can almost guarentee you that you have been in a meeting, built a relationship or even bought something from a sales guys who cold called his way to you at some point, unless you don’t entertain an idea from a subodinate or colleague unless you asked for that first as well?
With all due respect.
This is all crazy, I mean Dunn & Bradstreet has been doing this for years, so has the Scotts Directory, the only difference is it’s on the Internet. Most contact information can be be gathered by anyone with the time to make phone calls or from your local restaurant that keeps Business cards in a fish bowl.
Companies get called every day by prospectors and information gatherers using rues to garner information. Jigsaw is only redirecting some of this traffic.
Every recruiter knows that title and contact information can easily procured with persistent phone dialing and a quick mind.
So go conquer some real evil like cigarette companies, that leave you eventually displaying your contact info. on a grave stone, where the only way to reach someone is to pray.
This is bussiness doing business, with people in business and working in business. There is know private info here.
we do something somewhat similar.We have corporate phone directories
(not easy to get) of the Fortune 500. Particularly good for journalists
trying to find whistleblowers during a company scandal, such as Enron or
Tyco ($6000 shower curtain). corporatecontacts.net for info. We give
20% discount for journalists.
If you’re the kind of ‘executive’ who refuses to buy anything from a cold-caller, then to me, you’re not doing your job, and instead, to follow the thread of a previous poster, you are undermining your own job responsibilities by confusing them with your own personal convictions.
If I had someone working for me who refused “on principle” to purchase anything from someone who had cold-called him, that individual would be signing up for Jigsaw, looking for a new contact to hire him.
I would be deeply interested to learn if any of the prior detractors would consider a cold-calling recruiter with a great job offer for them, “an evil intrusion of privacy”. Somehow I doubt it. But it is still just salespeople doing B2B cold calling, all double standards aside…
There is nothing on Jigsaw that cannot be found on a business card (in fact there’s less: they do not allow mobile numbers), and many other companies, ie Hoovers, have been making such information available for a long time. Why do we not hear complaints about their practices?
Why are they not evil too?
The main difference is as far as I can see, that whereas Hoover’s charges Mafia-style extortionate prices for their services, Jigsaw charges a very modest fee.
All this talk of “evil’, if serious, is completely absurd, and seems to be generated mostly by people who appear to have absolutuely no place in the sales process or cycle anyway, so why is everyone so concerned? Nobody wants to waste your or their time by calling you if you have no skin in the game.