Reader Steve writes on the latest post about jigsaw.com:

"I find it interesting that the service is targeted at providing leads below the executive-level and that there is no notion of brokering connections as far as I can tell. This will likely restrict the types of sales processes that this model can support. Boiling things down, Jigsaw seems like an company that sells contact lists that have been cleaned to a better degree than the list generation companies (with the additional wrinkle that there are incentives to provide contacts). Off-the-cuff if I were a VC, it is not a model that I would have funded. That said, I think there are opportunities for companies to figure out how to build companies around social networking. Jigsaw and its VCs should be commended for that. Hopefully they will be successful if they can generate value and effectively deal with the privacy issue quagmire."

That made me very curious and I ventured in. I guess Jigsaw should not be confused too much with Social Networking (as I did in the morning). Jigsaw gives you detailed access to your decision maker in the company you are looking for. No hunt for endorsements or introductions - it's a simple approach getting the data and making your pitch to your prospective. I was playing around with such a business model in a related due diligence and found it quite interesting if you can solve the acquisition problem without privacy concerns (i.e. don't steal the data from databases). While Jigsaw will probably have privacy concerns we should focus on what this tool can provide. In essence - it may change the way sales people get leads. It levels the playing field.



I just logged on and the slick interface gave me direct access to companies and let's me search through the names in that company. Wonderful simple and fast. If Jigsaw can make sure that data quality is great (duplicates, outdated entries [how do you know who has the latest data in his upload btw?]) this can become a very handy tool. They probably have much help from people in India with the data cleansing.

You may ask yourself if you would upload your best clients - probably not, but also consider nobody knows you were the one who uploaded it, which is different than getting LinkedIn invitations.

So I'm even more curious about how Jigsaw develops and I think this is a VC model which can scale.