Online business website Zubican grew out of Matthew Graczyk’s frustration that so many online sites were geared toward consumers and not the business-to-business market. “It is just crazy because businesses spend twice as much as consumers,” said Graczyk, the firm’s president and CEO. With a database of thousands of businesses coast-to-coast, Moorpark-based Zubican facilitates contact between companies looking for goods and services. The database is the most comprehensive that he knows about for businesses, Graczyk said. Zubican became public in July following beta-testing of three private versions of the site. An updated version arrives in October. A visitor to Zubican types in a company name with the results presented in a profile that includes revenue and employee figures. Companies are ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 given by registered users; and through the Z-Profile on a scale of 1 to 100 based on the community rating, when the business last confirmed the information in profile, the number of links on its profile, and how many times the profile is viewed in a month among other criteria. The new version of the site will include business linking components and a more explicit explanation of what Zubican does. Graczyk is a serial entrepreneur of sorts, having taken early-stage Internet companies public, and turned around struggling tech ventures. In December he dedicated himself full-time to Zubican, which he founded and funded with two partners, Joseph Kevin and Brian Newton. While the site is currently ad supported, future plans call for premium pay services of a request for quotes section and a classified section for businesses to sell their wares. In the meantime, Graczyk and his partners tapped angel investors, including another serial entrepreneur in Robin Richards, now the advisor to the CEO of Blackboard Connect, a voice and text notification provider in Sherman Oaks. Having experienced the rise and fall of the first wave of Internet companies, Graczyk now rides the second wave of Web 2.0 that is more about connecting online users and creating a give and take between them rather than just trying to sell stuff. To that end, Zubican allows companies to customize profiles and to link those profiles with those of other companies to show its professional network. The new version gives users the power to send profiles and invite others to rate businesses within Zubican via e-mail. The functions all contribute to the site becoming the “business district” for the Internet. “We want to be the place online where businesses congregate and interact with each other,” Graczyk said. But why call the site Zubican? Graczyk explained there are no preconceived notions over the word and so has control over how to market the brand. The word, which is the Latin root for “to locate,” is easy to say, memorable because of using “Z” as the first letter, cannot easily be misspelled and lends itself to symbolism as starting with the last letter of the alphabet. “Zubican is the last place people will search for a business because they will find what they are looking for,” Graczyk said. Scour the Net Daniel Yomtobian plugs his new search engine Scour as being the bridge or missing link between the established search players of Yahoo! and Google and the Web 2.0 world of social networking and using visitor feedback to hone the quality of search results. Scour allows users to vote and comment on search results and make contact with other users with similar interests all the while earning points that go toward a $25 Visa gift card. “We are building a community and we are creating a better experience for future users who want to search the web and experience the next generation of web search results,” Yomtobian said. Operating from offices in Sherman Oaks, Yomtobian and his team employ a proprietary algorithm that differs from those used by Google and Yahoo! in that it refines the search results over time to make them more relevant. The Scour algorithm was included in the acquisition of After Vote, a search engine similar to what the new site does but lacking the incentive program or the connection features. In August, just a month after going live, Scour attracted 1 million unique users with very little advertising or marketing on the part of the company. That viral growth excites Yomtobian who sees it leading to the goal of up to a 5 percent market share. To bring users to this burgeoning community, an incentive in the form of the point system was created. Users collect the points through voting and commenting on search results. If a user gets a friend to join, the user collects 25 percent of the friend’s points. At 6,500 points the user receives a Visa gift card. This social networking aspect is what sets Scour apart from other search engines, Yomotbian said, and future features will allow users to e-mail or instant message other users. Scour is the second company in which Yomtobian has a stake. He also heads ABCSearch, a a pay-per-click search engine started in 2001. ABCSearch provides the sponsored listings on the Scour search results page. Merger Talks Tech industry trade groups AeA and the Information Technology Association of America are in discussions on a possible merger. Combining the two groups would give a strong voice to member companies and bring together the complementary offerings of both organizations. Changes in Washington, D.C. require the tech industry to speak with a louder, clearer voice, said AeA Chairperson Deirdre Hanford. “Our member companies compete in a global marketplace. In the states, in Washington, and around the world, this merger would allow the U.S. technology industry to further strengthen its partnerships with government for the continued advancement of technology,” said Hanford, Senior Vice President, Global Technical Services, Synopsys, Inc. The Los Angeles chapter of AeA is based in Woodland Hills. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected]. . He does his social networking the old fashioned way, face-to-face.