News Startup Pivots Toward B2B

Cameron Brain says his company's turn to a business-to-business service company has served it well.

Image: XYDO

We’ve all heard of the pivot. Today, social networking news aggregator XYDO is announcing a big one, turning away from the world of consumers to sell its services to businesses.

“What we initially wanted to do was build a system that took RSS to the next level,” by prioritizing news of interest to users, cofounder Cameron Brain told Portfolio.com. “Our focus was on developing a consumer product. Along the way we saw a lot of interest from businesses.”

So about four months ago, Brain said, the Park City, Utah, company began to shift from the consumer focus it had when it launched in the spring 2011 to hone in on creating weekly newsletters that businesses would be able to send out to their customers.

XYDO aggregates information that clients’ customers might find interesting, and the clients then cull through XYDO’s feed to eliminate items that don’t fit.

As of the announcement today, the company has landed a list of clients that includes the Utah Jazz, Lendio.com, Interbank FX, Doba.com, Zions Direct, BYU Athletics, Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, Gossamer Gear, and Axl's Closet. It has sent out more than 12 million emails on behalf of clients.

Brain refused to discuss the revenue his company was bringing in as a result of the swing to become a business service.

But, he said, “We found some pretty remarkable success in those efforts.”