IN 1982, when Michael Bloomberg started selling his new financial information terminals, many doubted his chances of success against the established giants of Reuters and Dow Jones Telerate.
The secret of Bloomberg's widespread take-up among the financial profession was that it not only offered raw information, but carved out a niche by allowing investors to manipulate and add value to the figures on the screen.
With that lesson in mind, Matthew Richardson began work five years ago on his own idea for a property related financial service based not in Wall Street, but Hong Kong.
This month the idea came to fruition with the launch of 'Pyramid' an on-line service delivered to desktop PCs offering tailored and detailed information about Asian property markets.
Pyramid is a service provided by Mr Richardson's company, Property Market Intelligence (PMI).
It is the first time this depth and scale of real estate information has been made available in this way.