“The product aggregates broker research, estimates, models, and access to the brokerages’ websites, which is really access to all the other content that the brokers maintain,” he explains. “We started selling it to the buy side in 2002 as a means of saving time. It’s a lot easier to find what you’re looking for on Themarkets.com than elsewhere.” Eisner says the typical client reports saving two to three hours a week of time in tracking down information. The business has doubled in revenue every year since 2002 and today, 1,700 large and small institutional investors subscribe to the service, ranging from small, start up hedge funds to large, established institutional money managers and private equity managers.

One area of expansion is simply to continue to grow the client base, especially internationally, starting with expanding a small sales and marketing office in London. Another is further investments in a new business line, a broker evaluation product called MeritMark that lets buy-side users evaluate individual analysts at the sell-side firms. “This tool will shed light on how much those at a buy-side firm value a given broker or analyst,” Eisner says. It will let buy side firms review how much they’re paying in commissions alongside the estimated value of the services. “The brokers want this -- the director of research doesn’t always know which buy-side firms and individuals value his analysts -- and there’s more desire on the money managers’ part for transparency,” Eisner says.