Making Life Easier is a business idea

We have a client who didn't exist as a company at the beginning of 2010. A couple of entrepreneurs had an idea for collecting information from some public websites, mildly re-organizing it and presenting it in an online tool that added cool features like mapping, comparisons, saving and some communication tools. The market was financial services, so not exactly boom-time and not exactly a market without incumbent information providers.

However, these guys - with my company's help of course - launched their service, contacted the market and now, at the end of 2010, they have a very healthy client base, growing revenues and investors knocking on their door (and writing checks).

I'm impressed by what they've done (and what we've done..), but what have they done? They've made a service that makes life easier for a target group of customers. It wasn't that the information wasn't there before, it was that it wasn't organized and presented so well. So customers will pay thousands of dollars for that, because its worth it. Making life easier with information is the business opportunity for the industry.