When it comes to dealing small businesses, the last thing you want is for the company you’re working with to renege on a transaction after you’ve contributed your half. Sending multiple invoices may be enough to annoy them into submission, but if that doesn’t work the legal fees and time involved with taking them to court usually isn’t worth it. Cortera, a new site that launched yesterday at DEMO Fall, is looking to help businesses avoid this kind of dispute.
Cortera can be thought of as a Yelp for business credit, offering reviews on large and small businesses alike that have been submitted by the community. In other words, it can help you figure out if a company you’re thinking of dealing with is going to pay you in a timely fashion, or if it’s run by deadbeats who should be avoided.
Up until now, the business credit market has been dominated by one major player: Dun & Bradstreet. But Cortera says that D&B fails to properly address small businesses, which account for a large percentage of America’s GDP. So Cortera has built out a database that includes not just the large companies that are D&B’s bread-and-butter, but also countless smaller ones that previously have been neglected.
The site’s members can use a review system much like the ones you’ll find on Yelp and Amazon to share their experiences with companies on the site, and paid members can also see key data like a company’s annual spending budget and supplier volume. Cortera offers one-off reports for as little as $3, and also has monthly plans beginning at $29 a month.
