About 250 people from venture capital firms, young startups, and mature companies attended an all-day Under the Radar event on the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, Calif., on November 17, 2004. Companies were grouped into tracks - Digital Home, Communications, Security and Enterprise. I was the moderator for the Digital Home track. Each person had 6 minutes to explain their company, followed by some Q&A by the VC judges.
Here are some brief notes on 12 of the companies that touched on the consumer space. Since I was also moderating some of these events, my notes are a little sketchy.
You can also read a San Jose Mercury News article about the event.
Digital Home - Part 1
- Akimbo - Steve Shannon, Founder & EVP
- Founded 2002 (series B - Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sprout Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Zone Ventures)
- Partners - Microsoft, Turner, Granada International
- Steve presented at an earlier IBDNetwork event (see notes). Akimbo's service collects video content from the Internet (short films, etc.) into a STB for viewing on your TV.
- STB costs about $230 and is now on sale (started Oct.), but because of relatively small library, the service is free. They are adding about 50-100 programs/week. Later the service will cost a planned $10/mo.
- They are now up to about 70 content partners, but only about 20 are deployed so far.
- They still plan to start with non-mainstream/specialty content, and later branch into mainstream content.
- iControl - Reza Raji, Pres & CEO
- Founded 2003 (private angel funded, raising money now)
- This company was stealth until this event. They offer a $10/mo. service for monitoring sensors and video cameras in a home, and a $400 kit of sensors and cameras that are user installed.
- They also are developing the infrastructure that runs the service.
- They are aiming at the "middle market".
- Monitoring can be done via the Web, web enabled phones, etc.
- Mirra - Richard Mandeberg, CEO
- Founded 2002 (Series B - Sequoia Capital, Venture Strategy Partners, Sunrise Capital)
- Channels - BestBuy (started 3 weeks ago). Has been offered on the net for about 10 months.
- Offers a networked "Digital Shoebox" for storing photos, videos, documents, etc., and a service for protected web access.
- Offers backup/restore and content version control. Can be used to transfer content from one PC to another.
- Acts as a web server so that others can be given permission to access content that the user makes available.
- Roku - Anthony Wood, CEO & Founder
- Founded 2002 (Series A - founder funded)
- Channels - Best Buy, RadioShack, Tweeter
- Partners - Microsoft, Apple, Analog Devices
- Roku presented at an earlier IBDNetwork event (see notes). They offer stylish Soundbridge "digital media adaptors" that allow music & photos stored on a PC to be enjoyed in another room.
- They are aiming at the high-end market (thus Tweeters).
- They are getting bounties from some of the content sources, such as Napster. They are now an iPod/iTunes sanctioned product.
- Sales are about $10-15 million this year, and they are predicting rapid growth.
Digital Home - Part 2
- Avtrex - Steve Francis, CEO
- Founded 2003 (bootstrapped so far, seeking funding)
- Avtrex makes software for advanced digital video recorders. Being embedded in other people's products, their contribution is seen through their user interface, advanced features and connectivity support.
- Customers include Prismiq, Proton Communications and others. Several will be shown at CES in a couple of months.
- Partners - ATI and Philips.
- DVRs will be allowed to connect to each other over the network.
- GlooLabs - Nathaniel Saal, Director of Product Development
- Founded 2002 (Angel funded, seeking funding now)
- Their product is GlooNet, a service that gives you access to your multimedia content via your web-enabled phone. laptop or other devices.
- Customers include MacSense, Nokia, and Intel
- Unlike Orb (below), GlooLabs focuses on personal content.
- Content is connected via a Java-based peer-to-peer network.
- Integra5 - Dr. Eyal Bartfeld, President & CEO
- Founded 2000 (Series B - Benchmark Capital, Lauder Partners)
- Integra's customers are the MSO (cable) companies that wish to offer a form of unified messaging via the TV screen. Caller ID, missed call log, TV e-mail & fax, visual phone book, etc., are some of the features they offer.
- Customers include Cox, Comporium, Glenayre
- Their product consists of their "UniTV Server". MSOs would buy into the service and optionally pass the costs onto the customer. The competition with satellite services is seen as one incentive for why MSOs might buy in, though the larger ones like Comcast have not done so yet.
- Orb Networks - Jim Behrens, CEO
- Founded 2002 (Series A - Morgenthaler Ventures)
- Orb is similar to GlooLabs, but also offers a way to send broadcast content to remote devices (they apparently get no trouble about distribution rights). An example they gave was watching a football game from a hotel room in Japan.
- Their service costs $10/mo. or $80/yr.
- They will have 8 partners showing at CES in a couple of months. The service will be branded under the partner's names, with only reference to Orb's technology.
- Their technology automatically does the transcoding to match the bandwidth and resolution in each situation.
Communications
There were two Communications sessions. One was more application/consumer oriented, and the other was more Enterprise VoIP oriented. The following were from the first set.
- BEDD - Stephen Carlton, CEO
- Founded 2001 (Raising money now)
- Uses Bluetooth-enabled phones to give users a way to find other people with similar interests. Phones link up to each other as you walk around, check out the owner's profiles of about 10 parameters, and let owners know when there is a match.
- Company has about 3,000 users in Singapore area. Software is spread by users when they tell friends (described as organic growth).
- Service is aimed at younger users. Cost is about 60 cents/month for unlimited use.
- Idetic aka MobiTV - Dr. Phillip Alveida, CEO & Co-Founder
- Founded 1999 (Series B - Redpoint Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Gefinor Ventures)
- MobiTV was shown at an SDForum event that I recently moderated. They provide TV programming on your mobile phone.
- Content partners include MSN, Fox Sports, NBC news, CSPAN, ABC news, TLC, Discovery, CNet, MLB and others. They had initial challenges getting content, but now their customer base is drawing new content to them.
- Service costs about $10/mo.
- Video is roughly 1 to 15 frames/second, depending upon the phone system and handset. They actually keep the stream to 17-18kbs and are more constrained by economics than the network.
- Traverse Networks - Doug Brackbill, President & CEO
- Founded 2001 (Series B - Labrador Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Foundation Capital).
- Traverse works between the LEC, PBX and VoIP providers on one side, and the mobile service providers on the other to autoforward your phone calls to your appropriate phone.
- The service is sold by the mobile service provider (they've signed up one, so far). The LEC operators are linked in, but it seems it they have agreed to be linked in because of law.
- The service costs between $5 - $10/mo.
- Zeosoft Technology Group, Inc. - Mike Huestis - President & CTO
- Founded 2003 (Angel funded)
- They offer an application server on handheld devices. A single JVM can operate multiple applications. They also have a Mobile AppBuilder, that they claim allows the development of an application in 4 minutes.
- Their approach can work through firewalls in a secure manner.
- They intend to use retail and carrier channels.
Judges for Digital Home parts 1 & 2:
Judges for Communications:
OK, now you can be the judge. Which companies to you think are most likely to succeed? Vote below and then see how the audience and judges voted.
