BusinessWeek - Most Intriguing Companies

Wonderful news!

We are very honored to learn that Permuto was just named to BusinessWeek’s inaugural list of “The World’s Most Intriguing Startups” for 2009.  The list highlights the hottest startups today who have a grand vision that forces you to consider how industries, economies, or the world could be remade.  In addition the company needs to be established and gotten some traction.

Permuto’s profile on the list can be found here.

Permuto’s CEO, Shaukat Shamim, had the opportunity to present and participate in a panel today at the Monaco Media Forum (MMF).

Now in its fourth year, MMF brings together leaders of new and old media for two and a half days of high-level discussions about the future of online, broadcast and print communications.

Hosted by HSH Prince Albert II, the invitation-only event focuses on emerging opportunities in technology, distribution and content, along with related developments in marketing and finance.

Update: Here are some pictures from today’s event.

The Permuto team has just returned from the Shop.org Annual Summit held in Las Vegas where the company just launched the ShopperConnect™ Network.  Permuto sponsored a booth at the Expo for the launch.  The Permuto team was out in force at the show, including the engineering team who made the trip to the show.

The show was a rousing success with a huge amount of interest from merchants and potential partners.  The buzz in the air was infectious.

Here are some pictures from our launch on the show floor and our launch dinner event in New York City.

Updated:  Here are some more pictures from our launch.  Enjoy!

Permuto was well represented by our illustrious Director of Sales, Deanne Swartz, at the recent, invite only, iMedia Brand Summit at Coronado, California, September 13 – 16, 2009.  The event is an annual summit between media sales pros and some of biggest brands who are spending on online advertising.

Here are some interesting takeaways observed from the Summit sessions.

• Sell marketing solutions, not advertising ideas – Tell brand buyers how they can sell their product, not where they can buy more advertising.
• It’s about effectiveness, stupid – It’s not what is most efficient – most effective. We are overvaluing clicks – need to readjust our measurement value
• Come with an Interesting POV – Brands like to be taught about new and interesting insights about their audience, not just sold to. Media buyers want sales reps to “bring a point of view about their business” to a meeting.  It is important to use data to make points on whey they should buy from you.
• Come Prepared or Go Home – 25% of all sellers do not come prepared or understand their business.  Tip:  Use Twitter to see where people are talking about their business.

Here are some interesting pictures from the Summit.

New Employee Orientation time at Permuto. The new hires have finished filling out their paperwork and are ready for some fun… Time to eat pizza and ice cream!

Permuto Family Day

Every now and then we like to have fun and bring our family’s in to check out our offices. Friday was the first Family day at Permuto. The kids, all ranging from 2 to 7, had a great time running circles around the office and cool off by eating lots of ice cream.

While the kids were running around, some of the Permuto team were having Rock Band tryouts for the new Nintendo Wii rock band.

Rock Band Tryouts

Here at Permuto, we like to work hard and play hard!

The Permuto team was out and about that the Ad-Tech conference in uncharacteristically balmy San Francisco (April 21-23, 2009).  This popular annual conference is the intersection of business, marketing, advertising, and some web technology.  Overall, the conference is a proxy of the health of the online advertising industry which can be summed up in one word… industrious.

This year, the venue Moscone West was quite a bit smaller than in years past.  The current state of the economy has slimmed down the number and size of the booths.  For example, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft had always had a sizable booths were much smaller presences than years before.  Yahoo! did not have a booth but a meeting room.  Google had a slimmed down booth and a meeting room.  Microsoft was pretty much a no-show on the expo floor this year.

Despite the slimmer list of exhibitors, the turnout at the show was excellent.  The show floor was extremely crowded and bustling with people.  There was definitely lots of energy, optimism, and excitement in the air with a lot of business cards changing hands, catching up with old colleagues, consummating new business deals, and budding business relationships.  People were definitely focused on making their business more efficient through the economic storm.

At night, the attendees of the show were treated to a bevy of parties scatter across the city hosted by VC’s, ad networks, and lead generation companies.  The parties were all packed to the gills and flowing with free food and drinks.  A great time was had by all.

When we founded the company back in April 2008, one of the first things we did was to look for a good name for the company.  As many of you know, it is difficult to find a proper name that has a good meaning, is easy to spell, pronounce, remember, and most importantly… available as a domain name.  After much searching, our CTO, Navdeep Saini, found the name for our new company, Permuto.

Many people we have met with have asked us what Permuto means.  Supposedly the name is derived from a Latin root for “total transformation”.  I also found a Spanish definition from the Collins Spanish-English dictionary.

permutar vt

1 (Mat) to permute
2 [+puesto de trabajo] to exchange, swap
[+acciones, edificios] to switch, exchange
[+intervenciones, actuaciones] to interchange

As the story goes, we all liked the name and hence Permuto was born!

Welcome to the Permuto blog! This is where we will post random musings and photos from our team, ranging from personal updates, technical insights, to perhaps totally random thoughts about the state of the industry.

Reading this blog is the best way to hear directly from the Permuto team and learn about new developments.