1969 - MDR Begins

Market Data Retrieval is founded by Herb Lobsenz in NYC.

He took a train to Grand Central Station, got a few rolls of dimes, found a telephone booth where no one was sleeping and started Market Data Retrieval by dialing every educational marketer in NYC. By the time he was out of dimes he had a few appointments. By the end of the first week, Scholastic agreed to become MDR’s first customer.

• The MDR database began as a computer tape file of school district enrollments and budgets
• Companies began asking for mailing lists of public-school districts and schools selected by enrollment and expenditures
• We became profitable, we began to grow, and we took suggestions from our customers