ProCompare Archive

Mor Sela, Co-Founder & CEO of NY-based ProCompare provided a demo of their web application last night at the TechAviv meetup in NYC. Mor described the service as offering, "business technology recommendations powered by a global community of IT professionals".

Basically what they do is provide a resource for product reviews in a variety of tech categories. The reviews are provided by IT workers who provide the reviews to gain face time to the small businesses who will use ProCompare to help figure out which products match their needs. They have a suite of tools to help narrow down the recommendations based on the small business owner’s needs.

Mor discussed their business model which I think needs work. Part of their plan is to go to the companies listed on the site (e.g. Cisco, HP, Microsoft, etc.) and try to get them to pay for referrals. They also plan to not link to the companies unless they pay and will note that these non-paying companies are just that on their results. I think this is a huge mistake because all it does it take away from the user experience to the end user. If a company doesn’t pay and ProCompare doesn’t link out to more details, that will come across poorly. I also think they need to be careful to never appear like companies who pay get preferential treatment in the results – especially since they push the trust factor on the site. It could end up like the issues Yelp is facing today regarding removing negative reviews for money.

On the flip side, I think they could partner with a company which we just reviewed the other day, WebCollage. For product companies who signup for a premium membership, WebCollage could provide a microsite inside ProComare. That could work very well for both companies.