incredible! This is like giving us a microscope we can study a company with. So
we said, “We can educate ourselves about the financial aspects of a company by
building a P&L, a cash flow, and a balance sheet, and making sure they all tie
together correctly—changing things and see how that affects the company.”
At the same time, over those 4 or 5 months, we were networking with
people that we could bring on board as our initial core development team.
Livingston: What were some of the first things you did once you...

technology, what was called parallel processing. There’s been a lot of research
on it. If we can commercialize that, it may be a really good business opportunity.”
That was the core concept of Alliant. That’s how we left Data General,
how we got started. That’s all we knew.
So that’s how we got started with Shareholder.com, the notion of commercializing
technology around shareholder communications.
Livingston: Back to when you started Alliant, when the three of you who
worked at Data General decided, “We’re going to start our own company . . .”
...

us the information; we’ll take care of it.” And we told them discreetly, “If anything
gets screwed up, we take the bullet. We’re here to help you.”
Then we just kept adding functionality and functionality. And the government
helped us too. We had three big breaks with the SEC.
The first was in the early ’90s when the SEC put out a comfort letter saying
alternatives to the printed quarterly report should be considered, including
800-based telephone numbers. That’s essentially like the SEC jumping up and
saying, “Go, go, go!” That’s about as...

that to a large firm in Omaha called West Interactive. So I had no capital costs.
We turned profitable in the summer of 1994.
Livingston: That’s less than 2 years.
Gruner: Yes. We had a seed financing in July of ’92.
Livingston: Who were your investors?
Gruner: It was just a small group of about 8 to 10 of my friends and business
associates, who put in about $25,000 each. We raised $276,000. I nursed that
money very carefully, worked without a salary for quite a while. It turned profitable
in the...

Gruner, I’m single, I enjoy this and that, etc.” This is before the Web.
Ron Gruner 433
The Boston Phoenix had personal ads in back, but then they moved in this
thing called voicemail ads. When I heard that, I said, “That’s kind of an incredible
idea.” It generates revenues—people call these numbers and you pay per
minute—but you can also hear the person, you get a feel for what they’re like. I
said, “You know, that concept could be applied to companies. Chief financial
officers and executives could communicate to the shareholders...