With over fifteen years of experience building algorithm-intensive software applications, Betz's perspective and technical acumen will add substantial depth to FirstRain's technology - in line with the rapid growth of FirstRain's product capabilities and customer base.

"We are delighted to add another leading-edge executive to our management team. Marty brings a wealth of directly applicable experience and as we continue to grow, having his algorithm and product design depth will be invaluable," said Penny Herscher, president and CEO of FirstRain. "His leadership and expertise comes at an exciting time as FirstRain expands our research platform to deliver only the highest caliber qualitative information to our clients," she added.

FirstRain provides a ground-breaking search-driven research application for investment professionals. The personalized service delivers highly relevant information configured to specifically match each client's needs, investment strategies, and market context. The firm will draw upon Betz's vast technical and business talent to address the complex algorithmic and computational challenges behind delivering such an innovative offering to the financial community.

Prior to joining FirstRain, Betz was a founding partner of Beon Software, where he created systems for the collection and analysis of real-time text-based communication, and led an EDA software product group at Credence Systems, Inc. Betz has also held partner and associate positions at several technical consulting firms delivering software in diverse fields ranging from drug development to document and customer categorization. Before choosing a career in software, he was a mathematics professor and researcher at the University of Texas at Austin.

"FirstRain is enviably positioned to leverage techniques in text analysis and conceptual search," said Betz. "I look forward to helping our clients by extending FirstRain's technology prowess in discovery and categorization of actionable information in unstructured data from the web."