John At The Center

Panjiva faces stiff competition from established global intelligence businesses like Dunn & Bradstreet, which focuses mostly on domestic business' financial data, and Alibaba.com, which has a $1 billion investment from Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) and showcases marketing information provided by overseas suppliers.

But in the beginning, Panjiva's biggest challenge wasn't facing down other companies. It was building something customers actually wanted. In 2008, after months of software development, Green and Psota were pleased with the search engine they'd built to help businesses find suppliers. But when Green put it in the hands of potential customers for a test run, the feedback was not what he expected.

via Panjiva: A search engine for global e-commerce – Feb. 19, 2010.