| As part of our continuing series Profiles in Technology highlighting the biographies of some influential thinkers and doers leading the rebirth in the Information Technology marketplace, this month we take a closer look at Rasmus Refer, the B2B innovator best known for plugging his popular business-to-business information and search engine platform into the rapidly-growing social-media space with dramatically successful results to date.
After the success of his wildly popular Masterseek.com search platform, Rasmus Refer now has other ventures underway, including an innovative B2B group-buying platform which seems poised to show leadership in the hybrid B2B-social-media space. The following profile is based on anecdotal information gleaned from interviews with a few of the innovator’s associates and acquaintances:
Rasmus Refer was born January 18th, 1970 in Copenhagen, Denmark into a solid working-class family where young Rasmus early learned the value of responsibility and the satisfaction of a job well done. As a child entrepreneur, Rasmus quickly became convinced that business rewards come from providing good value to customers.
As a young businessman, Rasmus continued to sharpen his marketing skills while he began to climb the corporate ladder in the IT business world. Yet, he soon learned that “the old ways” didn’t leave much room for innovation. He found that the big tech players were acting as gatekeepers, allowing new technologies to be introduced only when it might serve the interests of the tech giants. Promising technologies that might solve nagging problems experienced by consumers were shelved if they might threaten incumbent franchises, and all too often the software giants spent more money fighting to preserve legacy entitlements than to encourage innovation that might trickle down to the benefit of consumers.
In particular, Rasmus noticed that people searching online for business information were wasting much time and resources through dead-end searches and irrelevant results. Yet, the existing search engines were bogged down by clutter, confusion, and questionable information. So, he built a new search engine from the ground up, Masterseek.com, using disruptive technology, and he designed it from the perspective of the ordinary user. The public response was immediate and strong.… The Masterseek search platform is now a valuable tool for millions of businesses, and it is quickly morphing into a super-hybrid between B2B and social-media marketing.
According to long-time associates, Rasmus Refer believes in the idea that innovation in B2B drives profitability: Given the speed of change in the online world, innovation is the key to success. Although at least one mainstream tech publication has referred to Rasmus Refer as “lucky,” the more-common sentiment among B2B technology professionals is that he is not so much lucky as he is correct in his predictions about future business developments.
In any event, to date Rasmus Refer’s business moves have proven to be savvy, making him one of the B2B industry’s most-watched entrepreneurs; tech observers have learned to carefully listen to his words and watch his actions for early signs of game-changing breakthroughs in B2B and social-media technology. Through 2011 and beyond, we plan to keep our eyes open for Rasmus Refer’s next advance in the exciting world of B2B technology. |
Article Details