MerchantCircle----Business Marketing

What Company Is Offering:
They are a privately-funded business based in Silicon Valley, dedicated to helping local businesses get more customers quickly, easily and cost effectively. They know you've got a business to run, and you can't spare millions of dollars and extra employees to manage your advertising and marketing efforts. We don't think you should have to. Instead, let us help you.
How It Works:
MerchantCircle helps you tap into the power of the Local Internet to reach these potential local customers, who are online right now, searching for deals, recommendations and information in your community. They created simple tools to help you to promote your products and services, and designed our site to get your business listed higher in search engine results on engines such as Google and Yahoo. They developed free tools that help you develop a dynamic business listing and raise your visibility in search results. Moreover, we offer additional affordable service packages that leave phone book ads in the dust for a fraction of your budget.

Who Is Backing This Site:

MerchantCircle is led by an experienced team and funded by investors who share our vision and believe in the power of local businesses. Our backers include Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners and Disney's Steamboat Ventures, who each bring their specialized expertise to help us develop and improve your MerchantCircle experience.

Rustic Canyon has a deep understanding of small business advertising, earned in part through their experiences with the LA Times and City Search. Rustic Canyon was established in September 1999 to invest a portion of the funds created by a recapitalization of The Times Mirror Company (since acquired by the Tribune Company). Their Managing Partner, Tom Unterman, previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Times Mirror, where he supervised its investments, including an active venture capital investment program that included companies such as Netscape, City Search, and WebTV.

Scale Venture Partners employs a thesis-based strategy to identify innovative development-stage technology and healthcare investments. The ScaleVP team works with technology and healthcare companies to accelerate their growth and become more valuable to entrepreneurs, investors and consumers. Based in Foster City, California, the ScaleVP team collectively offers decades of technology and venture industry experience to development-stage companies in hardware, software, healthcare and medical devices. Representative portfolio companies include Alimera, Frontbridge, Glu Mobile, Good Technology, Monolithic Power Systems, Omniture, Orexigen, Placeware, ScanSafe, Seattle Genetics, Somaxon, Wayport and Xceive. For more information, visit www.scalevp.com

Disney's Steamboat Ventures helps companies succeed in emerging media and entertainment markets, and has extensive experience in advertising and developing truly local experiences. Disney owns an interest in 72 ABC radio stations, 10 television stations and many theme parks. In addition, Steamboat Ventures has an extensive investment portfolio, including advertising companies Quigo, who helps advertisers reach millions of targeted customers, and FastClick, (now ValueClick Media,) one of the first online advertising networks.


More at:http://www.merchantcircle.com/