At Intrinio, we are known for being a top provider of innovative financial data. Our powerful technology is paving the way for developers and large enterprises across the globe and is positively changing the way our dispersed financial sector operates. Intrinio’s advanced, reliable platform delivers premium data packages that allow innovators to build with a peace of mind.
We are proud to collaborate with some of the most innovative and impactful entrepreneurs and businesses, and we’re delighted to showcase their leading-edge work in our blog. Intrinio’s Customer Success Spotlight series will focus on a client that has used our powerful technology to build something revolutionary.
Meet our newest Customer Success Spotlight, MarketBeat! This seasoned financial media website specializes in offering fast stock market news, real-time financial data, and modern research tools. Whether you’re new to investing or are an experienced trader, MarketBeat is your one-stop shop. Subscribe today to get the latest market news, stock alerts, and financial analysis. We had the pleasure to interview the Founder and CEO of MarketBeat, Matt Paulson, about the company’s inception, how they’ve set themselves apart from their competitors, and the biggest successes and challenges they’ve encountered so far.
Give us the elevator pitch for your company.
MarketBeat is the website and newsletter that empowers individual investors to monitor their stock portfolios, research potential investments, and understand what’s happening in the broader markets. MarketBeat has been recognized for its comprehensive reporting of Wall Street analyst recommendations and its best-in-class portfolio monitoring tool, My MarketBeat. Whether you’re interested in researching a company’s dividend sustainability, earnings growth, insider buying activity, social media sentiment, short interest activity, or financial statements, MarketBeat has the objective tools you need to analyze any stock.
What is your professional background?
My name is Matt Paulson and I’m the founder and CEO of MarketBeat. I have been building and operating internet businesses since the late 1990’s and consider myself to be one of the first digital-native entrepreneurs. My first real breakout business was American Consumer News, a network of personal finance blogs that launched in 2006. I found success creating and promoting investment content and launched MarketBeat (then called Analyst Ratings Network) in early 2011. MarketBeat allowed me to leverage my computer science background, interest in the markets, and search engine optimization (SEO) skills to build a large digital financial media brand. I have also made a splash in the venture capital scene, raising more than $20 million to invest in technology startups in the Northern Plains.
What inspired you to start your company?
When I started MarketBeat in 2011, many financial news websites had stopped innovating. They built out big websites during the Web 1.0 era of the late 90’s, but rarely developed new tools or tried to create better user experiences. We also found that the financial data sets that were available were highly fragmented, incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate. We set out to create a modern news and research platform for individual stock investors, and we wanted to back it with the most complete and most accurate data available.
What have been your biggest challenges, and what did you learn from them?
One of the mistakes that I made in my earlier online business ventures was being too reliant on platform companies. My personal finance blogs lived and died based off how much traffic Google sent them. In early 2011, changes to Google’s algorithm caused the amount of web-traffic being sent to my websites in half. I was determined not to be overly reliant on big tech companies in my future businesses, which led to email list building being a major component of MarketBeat’s business.
What have been your biggest successes?
MarketBeat is among the highest revenue-per-employee businesses that exist online. The company saw $25.5 million in top-line revenue in 2021 and was able to achieve those financial results with just eleven employees. By building out our own software platform and best-in-class marketing funnels over the last decade, we have been able to build a company that scales exponentially while our staff count grows linearly.
How do you set yourself apart from your competitors?
MarketBeat has always been a technology-focused company. While other financial media and publishing companies have relied on off-the-shelf content management systems and marketing software, MarketBeat built its own platform from the ground up. That has allowed us to create data-driven research tools and user experiences that our competitors can’t match. Our tech focus has also allowed us to build an information distribution system at scale. With more than 2.7 million email subscribers, MarketBeat has one of the largest investor email lists that exists.
Why did you choose to work with Intrinio?
Intrinio is one of our core data providers. We work with them to provide fundamental information, corporate events, and options information on our website and in our newsletters. Their pricing is competitive. Their API is well documented and simple to use. Their team has also been great to work with. Whenever we are looking for a new type of data to license, we look to Intrinio first.
Are you interested or have questions about our data feeds and packages? Find out more information at intrinio.com or request a consultation today.
