Update: August 12, 2002

Catch of the Day was written and produced by Rafe Needleman from January, 2002 to August, 2002. The last column ran on August 12, 2002. Currently, Rafe is writing What's Next for Business 2.0. Contact Rafe at rafe@business2.com.

What it is:

Catch of the Day is a daily (two to four times a week) column by veteran technology journalist Rafe Needleman.

Read by almost all technology venture capitalists, and tens of thousands of technology executives, the column covers trends and ideas for the new economy.

The column is opinionated yet very brief, generally covering a single new company or idea every day. The brevity means people are extremely likely to read the column; as Mark Rose of Tribune Ventures says, "It is as much a part of my morning as my first cup of coffee!"

Who reads it:

The column is written for leaders in technology entrepreneurialism. This includes the following main groups:

• Entrepreneurs. Startup CEOs and execs, as well as people in more established companies that are trying to create new businesses or products, either from within those companies or as new enterprises.
• Financiers. The people who fund entrepreneurs. Traditionally Catch of the Day has reached deep into the VC and investment bank communities.
• Marketing, Technology, and Product Development Execs. People watching out for trends to exploit, or keeping an eye out for competitors or partners.
• Services Execs. People who have products or services that reach the above groups. That is, legal, technological, and other services companies that can profit from a strong entrepreneur.
• General Public. Those who simply want to keep up with what's new, or who like a small daily dose of technology with their morning coffee. The readership has traditionally included retail investors as well.

About the Author

Rafe Needleman has been covering technology and business since 1988. He started his technology journalism career at InfoWorld, where he was executive reviews editor. Following InfoWorld he became editor of Corporate Computing magazine, then manager of advanced technologies for ZD Labs. He moved to the east coast to work as the editor-in-chief of Byte magazine, and then back to San Francisco to be editor of CNET.com. He is the recipient of several Computer Press Awards, including best hardware review, best software review, and best online review.

In 1998 he joined Red Herring as editorial director of the Events department. In 1999 he took over the online editorial group and started writing Catch of the Day. Under his leadership, Redherring.com won Folio's award of Editorial Excellence in 2000 for online consumer publications.

Rafe left Red Herring at the end of 2001 to re-launch Catch of the Day as an independent editorial product consisting of the email newsletter, a Web site, and other products, yet to be announced.