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MediaSentiment
addresses investors who are interested in fast, reliable and accurate information to help
them take advantage of market opportunities
Services
Business Services
(CNTE-OTC: BB)
California News Tech
529 Buchanan Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: 415-861-3421
Marian Munz
Chairman, President and CEO
Interview conducted by:
Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor
CEOCFOinterviews.com
September 22, 2005
BIO:
Mr. Marian Munz is our President and Chief Executive Officer and a Director. Mr.
Munz has held those positions since our inception on January 22, 1999. Mr. Munz also
serves as a consultant to California News Tech. Since March of 1997, Mr. Munz has been
developing software for internet since mid-nineties. One package has been recognized as
recent as 10/19/04 by PC Magazine as “nifty utility which improved the way your
browser searched and stored information”. NetonizerTM, the first multi-window browser
and knowledge management tool capable of browsing the web, ftp servers, internal servers
and hard drives as well as creating and browsing CD-ROM catalogs, has been reviewed by
prestigious publications such as PC Magazine, Windows Magazine, Byte, PC World,
Computerworld as well as industry expert, John C. Dvorak. Mr. Munz has also provided
Information Technology consulting services to companies such as: IBM, Sun Microsystems,
Apple Computer, SBC Communications, Chevron and others. Mr. Munz holds an M.S. in
Information Systems from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.
Company Profile:
California News Tech is a leading provider of media sentiment information with
applications in a wide range of business sectors. A web-based subscription service is
available at www.mediasentiment.com. For more information about California News Tech,
please contact corp@californianewstech.com. California News Tech is publicly traded on the
over-the-counter market under the ticker symbol CNTE.
CEOCFO: Mr. Munz, what was your vision when you started
California News Tech, and where are you today?
Mr. Munz: “The vision emerged back in 1999. During that
time, the internet has become a source of information in real-time. We evolved during the
last five years from a news ticker bringing headline news in real-time in multiple
languages to the MediaSentiment product line which helps investors make better and faster
decisions. Today, our capabilities include not only helping to find the critical
information, but also analyzing it and enabling rapid decision-making.
MediaSentiment™ focuses on helping online investors make faster and better investment
decisions. Investors are moving online at very high speed, with over 25 million active
accounts currently. We give investors not only unique and timely information but also a
high level of accuracy. MediaSentiment addresses investors who are interested in fast,
reliable and accurate information to help them take advantage of market opportunities”
CEOCFO: How do you do
that?
Mr. Munz: “MediaSentiment™ finds the news from over
6,500 media Web pages and, in real-time, applies its unique algorithms to come up with a
negative or positive read on media coverage. MediaSentiment™ products allow investors
to quickly grasp media sentiment, both historic and up-to-date, from many of the major
news sources. The current news system in use today, in my opinion, is very outdated. With
our system, online investors can make faster and more accurate decisions. I personally see
3 major trends at the financial industry level, which will help to bring our tools into
mainstream.
First of all, online investors will grow more and
more demanding for timely and accurate information that enable them to make faster
decisions. I believe that they will get tired of the old paradigm when they receive the
information in a raw format and after the fact.
Second, the availability and instant dissemination of
the news and information critical to the investment decision process. Today, there are
thousands if not tens of thousands of news outlets providing the news and critical
information that investors need. From a publisher in China to the small town newspaper
– the news is out there. The main task will be reaching to the right piece of news
and making the correct judgment in a timely fashion. That is, in my opinion, what will
distinguish the winners from losers in the online world.
Finally, the 3rd major trend will at a
higher level, in the internet search arena. I strongly believe that within the next 18
months, internet users will demand decision support tools instead of simple search tools.
As successful as Google is today, they basically, have brought the internet search
paradigm to the end of the road. Therefore, users will be looking for easier and faster
tools to help them not just find information but actually, make faster and better
decisions.”
CEOCFO: What is your
revenue model?
Mr. Munz: “The current revenue model has two major
components. One is subscription revenue where we are selling our services to online
investors for a very affordable price of $99.95 for a one-year subscription. The second
component is advertising revenues, but this mainly comes from our newsletter, titled E-motions.”
CEOCFO: You have
recently become a public company. How has that changed California News Tech?
Mr. Munz: “We made the decision to take the company
public for a couple of reasons. One was that it created an opportunity for us to grow a
lot faster than we would have otherwise. Now that we are publicly traded, it has become
essential to offer opportunities for easy product customization.”
CEOCFO: What are you
doing with the additional capital?
Mr. Munz: “We are finalizing our new product line and
beginning to market them as household brand names. Currently, our products essentially
dominate the existing market, and, in my opinion, they will become one of the key
financial tools of the future.”
CEOCFO: Is there much
competition?
Mr. Munz: “There is not a lot of competition for us. We
are in the beginning of a new era, and my vision is that online users will look for
portals and tools to help them to not only navigate but also make sense of information in
a timely manner.”
CEOCFO: Is that because
there is so much out there?
Mr. Munz: “Yes. Sources of online information have grown
tremendously. To give you just one example, the blogs (i.e., information resources
available to individuals on the internet) are growing at about a million sites a day.
There is a tremendous amount of information that currently, users do not have the ability
to reach let alone to analyze.
Our company is taking a leadership position and is
ready to capitalize on all three trends mentioned above. The MediaSentiment™ set of
tools is capable of searching and analyzing article from thousands of news sources, in a
very timely manner. In fact, provide our users with top of the line decision support tools
to be able to make better investment decisions faster and without spending a lot of time
and frustration.”
CEOCFO: How do you
assess some of the less objective sources of news?
Mr. Munz: “We are looking at thousands of news sources,
so you will have a broad view over a period of time. MediaSentiment™ gives you a
sense of the overall sentiment in the media; more than just pinpointing one source.
In addition to bringing news abstract from individual sources, we also offer a
consolidated view based on information coming from multiple sources.”
CEOCFO: How do you reach
your new customers?
Mr. Munz: “We are focusing on a few activities. One is
partnerships with online financial content distributors or providers, and we just closed
one just recently. The second way we are planning to attract customers is by going
straight to them, using direct and online marketing.”
CEOCFO: What is
California News Tech’s Visual Search?
Mr. Munz: “Last year we developed a program to track the
concepts and issues that prevent a campaign from succeeding. That then became the basis of
our new technology called Visual Search. One example of what it can do is if you want to
find out the information that is available about a particular concept or issue. You did
multiple searches, but even at that point, you will not have a sense of the information
timeline. With Visual Search, you will get a graphic representation of the information and
how it evolved over time. Also, with Visual Search, you start with a visual representation
of the available information to aid in your decision making, rather than starting with a
huge amount of information, and then working from there to aggregate and making sense of
it.”
CEOCFO: Address potential investors; why should they be
interested?
Mr. Munz: “There are three major reasons I would give a
potential investors to seriously consider getting involved with CNTE now. First of all, we
represent the next wave of Internet technology, taking the web from search into a
re-search paradigm. This is the next big thing on the net. Second, there is huge market
potential for our technology. The online investment market segment is our first market.
Our product line can be used in a similar fashion for online politics, predicting hot
products at Christmas time and assessing the major industry trends and issues. In fact,
last year we did a research project with the Stanford University Political Lab in tracking
the presidential election issues. Based on that data, we were able to predict in early
September that President Bush was going to win re-election. Lastly, we have a very
talented team in place. I would just say: look at what we have accomplished so far with a
very minimum investment and you will immediately the growth potential we have in front of
us.”
CEOCFO: In closing, what are your competitive advantages in
the market?
Mr. Munz: “Here are the three main factors that I
believe will give us a significant, competitive advantage: The first mover advantage,
barriers to entry and a focused strategy.
In terms of our first mover advantage, we are
currently in discussions with a number of online distributors, retailers and trading
platform players and they all recognize that our product offering and Media Sentiment
indicators are unique and a ‘first’ in the industry. In fact, Financial Content,
publicly traded under the symbol FCON, and who is a significant content distributor to
over 400 online publishers has signed MediaSentiment as exclusive provider of guess what,
Media Sentiment tools.
And that brings up the second major competitive
advantage we have: Barriers to entry. These include our MediaSentiment trademark and web
site domain name, MediaSentiment.com. MediaSentiment is a wonderful brand name, and, in
conjunction with the first mover advantage, investors will associate the MediaSentiment
concept with the set of tools we provide. We also own unique, patent-pending technology as
part of the intellectual property portfolio.
Finally, our focus strategy is the third major
advantage. We stay focused on providing MediaSentiment data and indicators and we are not
competing with other services that provide traditional stock data and information. That
allows us to work with a wide range of strategic partners, from distributors to stock
systems and trading platforms and even publisher of complementary information.”
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