SAN MATEO, California, October 13 /PRNewswire/ --

- Technology Leader Mines Hard-to-Find Data from the Web

FirstRain(R), the leading provider of search-driven research, today announced the launch of its UK operations. This milestone makes an innovative fundamental data stream available to U.K. firms for the first time.

"FirstRain feeds us fundamental information on industries and companies that is not generally available on sell-side research," said Luis Benoliel, analyst at First State Investments. "This helps us reduce the risk of missing important industry data points."

FirstRain clients include large global firms, investment managers and hedge funds, including Pioneer Investments, The TCW Group, Inc., Institutional Investor, JVC, Motorola, SAP and more than 100 other firms who insist on confidentiality to maintain their competitive advantage from using FirstRain.

"The Web has grown into the richest but most chaotic business dataset in the world. As a result, our users can quickly identify data points, trends and questions that impact their business decisions," said Penny Herscher, President and CEO of FirstRain. "The market now sees the imperative to use the breadth and depth of information the Web offers -- our technology now makes this systematic and repeatable."

Investment and corporate professionals select FirstRain for:

-- Highly efficient and personalized access to hard-to-find information from sources like blogs, global and local news; and industry and professional publications -- Revealing and non-conventional analytics about management, including unannounced turnover and communication patterns -- Comprehensive visibility into data on quiet, hard-to-research, mid-cap, small-cap and private companies -- Risk mitigation by systematically ensuring no Web information relevant to the company is missed each day -- Daily reports of critical information about industries, corporate governance issues and competitive trends retrieved from widely dispersed data sources on the Web

Firms interested in the service may inquire by phone at +0-808-101-3444, or by email at sales@firstrain.com

About FirstRain

As the leader in search-driven research, FirstRain provides global firms with a competitive advantage, revealing information and trends from the web that they would not otherwise see. FirstRain changes the rules of research by applying state-of-the-art extraction and pattern detection technology to the web. FirstRain is a privately held company with more than 150 employees, headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., with additional offices in New York, NY and Gurgaon, India. Contact FirstRain at http://www.firstrain.com. Visit CEO Penny Herscher's blog, Market Mine, at http://pennyherscher.blogspot.com.

Web site: http://www.firstrain.com

Todd Enders of FirstRain, Inc., +1-650-356-9064, tenders@firstrain.com; or Evonne Lum of Ogilvy Public Relations, +1-415-677-2704, evonne.lum@ogilvypr.com, for FirstRain