Larry Weiss

Larry is the founder of Linescale. As a kid, you probably wore UNDEROOS, Larry's first entrepreneurial new product. He created many other mass-market products over his career. While head of the Development Division of Citicorp in the 1980's, Larry directed development of innovative online consumer banking applications, Citibank's full service ATMs and a broad spectrum of other banking products around the world. This was followed by his design of the 24-hour Automated Postal Centers and Web applications for the US Postal Service. Larry also contributed to design of the Priceline.com travel reservation system.

Recently Larry focused on Linescale, while at the same time consulting with client companies including Sonic Drive-In, Citibank, Aetna Insurance, Priceline.com, FreshDirect, Walmart.com, 1-800-Flowers, Pitney Bowes, Kraft Foods, Lenox Hill Hospital, Lincoln Center, Chase Bank, Jenny Craig, Simon & Schuster and Marriott International.

He started at Pillsbury and General Foods, doing innovative marketing research, new product development and product group management. Among his familiar packaged-goods creations, in addition to Underoos Children's Underwear, are Cycle Dog Food and Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles Cereal (see list at: http://gort.net/ProductIndex.htm).

Larry Weiss has degrees in Psychology and Philosophy and Experimental Psychology from Boston University, and fourteen U.S. Patents.

Dan Axtell

Dan Axtell serves as Linescale Chief Technologist. Dan specializes in finding unorthodox solutions to unconventional problems, and has designed the software used for the Linescale system by leveraging open source tools with an agile programming methodology. Dan follows a minimalist design philosophy that complements the "less is more" approach of the Linescale system. Dan is an expert web developer, with a strong background in Windows applications, unix system software and embedded applications. Dan has been programming professionally since 1991 and is a graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology with a degree in physics.

Donna Porter

Donna is Linescale's Operations and Training Chief. Donna brings many years of experience developing user-centered software products and services for personal computers, work stations, Internet, mobile devices, touch-screen kiosks, interactive voice response systems and industrial machine controls.  She consulting in software design and development for  AT&T, Verizon, American Express, United States Postal Service, Pitney Bowes and Sealed Air Corporation. Donna was a Vice President/Creative Director at Citibank's Development Division where she directed development of consumer banking products and services.  Earlier, as a founding member of Scholastic Software and a former high school teacher herself, she helped pioneer the development of award-winning educational software products for students and teachers, then went on to create educational software products for consumer markets.

Donna holds a B.S. degree in Education from Northern Arizona University with English and Psychology majors.
                                                                                          

Jay Popovich

Jay is our Director of Client Services and is responsible for client development and partnerships.  He brings over 8 years of market research experience working in business development, client service and project management roles at Survey Sampling International (SSI).  Jay has engineered custom research solutions for a wide variety of clients including Fortune 500, market research, global management consulting, agencies, private equity, government and academia.  All with different needs, speeds and sizes.

Jay holds a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Connecticut with a concentration in Marketing.

Eric Wright

Eric Wright is a software engineer with over 12 years of experience designing, developing and marketing applications for the web. Eric founded his own company in 2004, specializing in customized software solutions. He has built soup-to-nut systems for corporations and non-profit organizations alike in many different industries including manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, film, radio and research. Some of his past clients include Hewlett-Packard, Amphenol Corporation, Verizon Communications, and Cox Radio. Eric is a Sun Microsystems Certified Java Programmer but has an entire arsenal of programming languages under his belt. Most of all Eric is a problem solver and knows how to use the right technology to get the job done.

Jeanne Donovan Porter

Jeanne brings to Linescale a background in communications and analysis.  Before joining Linescale, she worked for major public relations firms as a strategic communications specialist, where she helped corporate clients develop and execute positioning, transactional and crisis communication initiatives.  She began her career as a corporate attorney, where she honed her drafting, critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Jeanne holds a B.A. in English, summa cum laude, from Boston College and a J.D., cum laude, from Boston College Law School.

Marv Weiss

Marv is our reporting expert. He creates specialty reports based upon clients' needs and automates standard reporting techniques. 

Marv has a BSME from Northeastern University, MS Eng. and MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is a registered professional engineer in NY, MA and ME.

Katie Weiss

Katie is Linescale’s CFO and Administration Officer. She previously was Chief of Staff at Citibank International Personal Banking Division, Chief of Staff for the Citicorp Development Division and directed The Lab, Citibank’s Customer Interaction and Consumer Research facility.  Prior to Citibank, Katie worked at financial projects and audit for Time, Inc. and Haskins & Sells.  Katie is engaged in not-for-profit activities as a member of the UN Committee on Ageing and is Board Chair of Aging in America, a senior services agency in New York City. She has been named Trustee of the Year by the NY State Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.

Katie has a BA from Wellesley College and studied at Dartmouth College. She earned M.S. in Accounting from NYU and New York State CPA certification.

Bob Longman

Bob Longman founded Lunalux, Inc., a strategic marketing and development firm in 1978. His major clients have included Citigroup, Bank One, NYSE, IBM, UMG, Pitney Bowes and Pepsico. His work has concentrated in product development, branding, communications and market research.

Among his unique strengths, Bob was a specialist in innovative applications of quantitative techniques and psychometrics.

Bob died recently, and we honor his work, his human grace and his memory.

SUMMARY of Linescale Technology

FAST
Linescale® is very fast . Answers in days, not weeks.

COST
Linescale is affordable. It's designed to encourage you to run repeat surveys. This lets you improve based on immediate learning.

SUCCESS
Try, and try again. Success comes from iteration. Linescale speed and affordability lets you increase your chances of  winning!

NORMS - BREAKTHROUGH, STRONG, GOOD, ABOVE PAR, BELOW PAR, POOR
Linescale has a huge data base across a wide array of products, new products and services. We know what the numbers mean! Banking, On-line Auctions, Coffee, Retail, Supermarket Brands, AVR Customer Service, On-line Retail, Financial Services, Hotels, Online News Services, Quick Service Restaurants, Pet Food, Baby Food, Designer Bedding, Children's Underwear, ATMs, Weight Reduction Programs, Postal Service Kiosks, Cereal, On-line Couponing, Telecom, Postal and Mailing Services, Investment Adivice, Office Equipment, Small Business Services, Household Products, Credit Cards, Concepts, Benefits, Direct Mail Pieces, Positioning Statements, Storyboards, Finished Commercials.

BEHAVIOR CHANGE
Linescale tests in direct comparison with each consumer’s current favorite brands or practices. If they prefer your product or promise to what they are doing today, you know something important.

Linescale reframes the problem to directly measure what we really want to measure; relative preference. This is the essence of the Linescale Research technique. Linescale uses sophisticated presentation of scales to derive the simplest and most reliable of measures - rank order preference of items versus the respondents' current favorites. This simple technique solves many traditional measurement problems.

DEPTH, RICHNESS and VERBATIMS
Reports give in-depth consumer response organized to quickly let you understand who likes or dislikes your program and why. Consumer’s get engaged with Linescale’s Unique Interactive survey – with no group pressure, no interviewer, no moderator. They let you know what they honestly feel and why. In their own words, consumers let you know why they rated your program as they did. Organized Verbatims give texture to what’s going on in your customers’ minds.


Linescale is an innovative highly interactive web-based survey technique for screening, improving, developing and evaluating new products and services and refurbishing existing products. It is the fast, low-cost Internet evolution of consumer laboratory systems used by major packaged goods and financial services companies for decades.

What does it do?
This interactive development tool first guides generation and improvement of the concept itself, then gives you laser-like feedback on development of the product or service and its marketing components.

Linescore ® A unique and reliable assessment and report of how your product or service will do.

With Linescale, you will get a Linescore business report.  The Linescore is a concise performance summary which highlights the percent of respondents who will likely be customers for the product. Senior management and investors find the objective Linescore summary useful in evaluating whether to fund a venture.

Linescale is a behavior predictive development tool. Target customers actively rank how a new product concept or idea stacks up against their current two favorite brands or practices in the space, how the execution of the idea works – at any level of finish - and what competitors they will likely switch away from. Linescale goes beyond Purchase Intention scales and "do customers like it" and predicts whether customers will buy and use it over time by substituting it for their current practice. Now you can rapidly and inexpensively make sure you have the concept and offering right and the marketing expression optimum BEFORE you spend the big dollars and time in production and introduction.

Linescale delivers fast, reliable scores, verbatim responses and diagnostics that summarize interest, probable trial, repeat and depth of repeat. The analysis shows which customers want the product and why, how to improve it, who hates it and why, and what it needs to fix it.