Jigsaw Data Corp., a San Mateo, Calif.-based dot-com company that wants to create the worlds largest electronic business-card directory, is expanding its work force at an office it opened in Post Falls two years ago.


The company now employs 33 people there, nearly double what it did a year ago, and it expects that number to climb to 40 by the end of this year, says Bob Memmer, its director of sales and top executive at the Post Falls facility.


Jigsaw leases 6,500 square feet of floor space at 510 S. Clearwater Loop, in the Riverbend Commerce Park, and the 28 full-time employees and five independent contractors who work there are involved mostly in selling access to the companys database and in providing customer support.


The Post Falls office is the only satellite operation of the company, which also employs 33 people at its San Francisco Bay Area headquarters.


Jigsaw chose to establish an office in North Idaho partly because co-founder Jim Fowler, its CEO, formerly owned the Lookout Pass Ski Area near Wallace, Idaho, with other investors, and was familiar with the area, Memmer says.


Jigsaws online directory currently includes contact information for about 6.2 million people from about 500,000 companies, and is growing at a rate of 10,000 to 12,000 contacts a day, Memmer says.


The mission of the company is to map every business organization on the planet, he says.


Jigsaw targets the business-card database mostly at salespeople, marketers, recruiters, and small-business owners who, as its Web site says, want to bypass gatekeepers and get directly to decision makers and influencers.


The four-year-old company, which plans to shorten its name to Jigsaw Corp. soon, garnered a total of about $18 million in three rounds of venture-capital financing and expects to reach profitability in the first quarter of next year, Memmer says.


Its actually growing faster than we had budgeted for, he says.


Jigsaw uses a pay-or-play business model. Members pay a monthly or annual fee to gain access to the directory, orusing a point system to accumulate creditsthey basically trade business cards they have for business cards they need. They earn points when they enter new contacts, update existing ones, or refer other members to Jigsaw, and also can buy points from other members.


To subscribe to the directory, individual users can pay $25 a month, or they can enter 25 business contacts per month instead of paying, Memmer says.


Small businesses that use the directory typically pay $300 to $500 annually, while large businesses pay as much as $5,000 to $100,000 a year, though they, too, can use points as currency, he says.


About 260,000 registered users currently have access to the system, he says.


Members can search for information in the directory using such criteria as company name, contact name, area code, ZIP code, country, state, industry, number of employees, annual revenues, and Fortune 500 or 1000 ranking.


A number of data companies offer business-contact information through their Web sites, but Jigsaw claims that the collaborative, self-correcting structure of its directory sets it apart from the rest.


We maintain it through the churn, by awarding points to users who update incorrect contact information or who successfully challenge it out of the active database, causing it to be moved to a business-card graveyard, Memmer says. Conversely, members can be slapped with point penalties for adding bad contacts to the directory, he says.


The person submitting information to the directory can enter it without having to get permission from the person being listed.


Some critics, including representatives for an organization called Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, argue that obtaining information from a business card and uploading it to the Internet in such fashion is unethical. They contend, among other things, that the practice creates a breeding ground for identity thieves and spammers.


Defenders of the practice counter, though, that its not reasonable for businesses to expect that they can conceal information about their structure, including contact information for employees, given ongoing information-technology advances.


In response to critics, Fowler has said in published comments that Jigsaw simply embodies the principles of a trend, referred to as Web 2.0, in which World Wide Web users are becoming more-interactive participants in creating and sharing Internet content, rather than remaining passive consumers.


Along with subscription fees, Jigsaw derives revenue by selling lists and by providing some professional services.


Fowler and Garth Moulton, both of whom had worked for years in software sales, developed the concept for Jigsaw as a way to address the classic challenge for salespeople of how to find new contacts.


An idea for a shared Rolodex came out of that, Memmer says.


The two men founded the company in the fall of 2003, but the company didnt launch its Web site until August 2004, he says. It opened its Post Falls office in July 2005.


Fowler operated the Lookout Pass ski area from 1991 to 1996 and was an activist in the Route of the Hiawatha bike trail project near Wallace before getting involved in the software-sales industry.


Contact Kim Crompton at (509) 344-1263 or via e-mail at kimc@spokanejournal.com.