Emerging Technology : Innovation + Job News

Curalate launched its groundbreaking visual analytics platform in 2011 and began accruing an impressive client base, including The Gap, Michael Kors, Campbell's and Saks Fifth Avenue. Now the University City-based company has broadened its focus to include customer engagement strategy.
 
The investment community has gotten behind the decision. Curalate’s seed round funders—New Enterprise Associates, MentorTech Ventures and First Round Capital—have reinvested $3 million in their Series A. The company has grown from four to 14 employees in the past year and now seeks web developers.
 
Visual analytics, the foundation of Curalate’s subscription plan, enables large companies to track images on platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr. "Increasingly, consumers are talking about brands using pictures instead of words," explains founder and CEO Apu Gupta. "We make it possible for brands to understand who’s talking about them, what they’re talking about and what’s important to customers."
 
Graphics, more than text, reveal specifics about consumer preferences. Someone might "like" The Gap on Facebook, but posting a blue sweater explains why. With visual information, businesses can better determine what to include on their homepage, email blasts and billboards, as well as which products to use for social media promotions.
 
"In a social context, [brands] have never known, specifically, which products were driving their engagement," says Gupta. "What brands can do with that is pretty powerful."
 
In September 2012, Curalate launched their "dashboard," allowing clients to manage customer social engagement on visual platforms and administer promotional campaigns. They’ve partnered with several established public relations agencies and helped The Gap effectively promote across nine countries.
 
Source: Apu Gupta, Curalate
Writer: Dana Henry

The seventh PennApps -- held January 18 through January 20 -- was the largest student-organized hackathon to date worldwide. Over 450 students from universities across the United States, Switzerland, Canada and Germany competed for cash prizes during the 40-hour app building session. On the final afternoon, Irvine Auditorium at 34th and Spruce Streets was packed, as the top twenty teams presented demos to students and national talent scouts.

"Team after team, for twenty straight teams, just killed it," says Pulak Mittal, a PennApps organizer and Penn junior studying computer science and business. "One of our goals as organizers is to put Penn on the map as a top ten technology school. The feedback and the experience of everyone at [the hackathon] indicate that that’s actually happening."

Amongst international contenders, Nop Jiarathanakul, a Penn graduate student in computer graphics engineering who worked solo during the hackathon, placed third for his project Web Tube. The hack is a lightning-speed web browser with an old-school TV monitor graphic interface.

Representatives from many of this year’s sponsors -- which included Microsoft, Yahoo, Venmo, Dropbox, Ebay, Facebook, First Round Capital, Kayak, The New York Times, Twillo, AppNexus, RedHat and Tumblr -- awarded their own prizes to Challenge teams. Winners from Penn were WebTube, Social Development and Urban Sustainability, Uncloseted, Enligne, OnShift, Skynet Command, and Beets.

Mittal says this semester’s PennApps broke the "mobile or web dichotomy" inherent to software hacks -- many teams produced hardware aimed at enhancing everyday objects including backpacks and bikes.

With several listings on Hacker League each week, hackathons have become a phenomenon. As Mittal points out, some hacks even go on to become startups--Firefly,Snapsite, and PayTango came from past PennApps. Traditional computer science education is valuable, he believes, but so is building.

"You see all these other ways technology is changing education," he says. "But I think education in the technology space might be changing dramatically as [hackatons] become something people go to consistently. It will be interesting to see what hackathons contribute in terms of people going into the industry. I’m glad to see PennApps at the forefront."

Source: Pulak Mittal, PennApps
Writer: Dana Henry

In late 2011, Aaron Frazin, future co-founder and CEO of Charlie, was a college senior frustrated with the job application process. To prepare for an interview, he’d spend hours combing the web for information on the company and the interviewer.

"I found myself doing the same research over and over," says Frazin. "I asked, 'Why isn’t there anything out there that can do this for me?'"

A year later, Frazin's mobile tool to help professionals "get up to date"--which he co-founded with Junaid Kalmadi--graduated from DreamIt Ventures. Charlie is also completing its first round of financing with significant investment from angel investors and DreamIt. The company is split between Philadelphia and Chicago; the tech arm is based in University City. On the cusp of launching in beta, they are seeking a VP of Engineering and plan to hire software engineers.

Charlie could be described as a cheat sheet for meetings, but Frazin likens it to a personal assistant or butler on your mobile device. (The bowtie insignia is a nod to that inspiration.) Before a critical first impression, the app fetches commonalities, life events, social updates and company news on the client or contact. It also provides news updates on the subject’s specific interests for elegant icebreakers and syncs the virtual briefing with appointments stored in your mobile calendar.  

Frazin, a 2012 Kauffman Global Scholar who studied business economics at Indiana University and moved to Philly to attend DreamIt, made an animated short he considers his Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The video went viral six months ago and the budding entrepreneur says he’s been inundated with emails asking for the product. "I really wanted this kind of app," says Frazin."We realized other people want it that bad too."

Source: Aaron Frazin, Charlie
Writer: Dana Henry 

In 2010, a Cornell University-led research team made a technological breakthrough: Tiny beams of light reached into a microscope slide and grabbed a cellular protein without significantly altering the protein’s environment. Scientists were already capable of grasping a whole cell using optical tweezers, but a protein is up to 5,000 times smaller and in constant rapid motion—it’s also critical to our understanding of physiology and disease.
 
Thanks to Optofluidics, research labs will finally be able to pin down this elusive element. The company, a tenant of the University City Science Center, licenses Cornell’s technology and is currently marketing the "Molecular NanoTweezer." They will launch their product within six months, and are hiring a nanobiotech applications engineer.
 
According to Rob Hart, co-founder and chief technical officer at Optofluidics, commercializing a new technology is a "heck of a lot of work." In the confines of the academic laboratory, a ten percent success rate is considered an achievement. The real world, however, is a far messier place, and a marketable product needs to work consistently.
 
Optofluidics partnered with NextFab Studio on a range of custom parts and developed their system design in conjunction with Horsham-based Avo Photonics. They’ve accumulated $580,000 in private investment from the Ben Franklin Nanotechnology Institute and BioAdvance, along with $1.5 million in federal and foundation grants.
 
Nanotechnology has broad implications for the spectrum of scientific research--it can be used to make new medicines, create more efficient solar panels or build better bike frames. For health sciences, the Molecular NanoTweezer enables the increasingly popular field of single-molecule research. "It sounds advanced because it is," says Hart. "It’s a really cutting edge way of moving things around."
 
According to Hart, pharmaceutical companies and several large universities, including Drexel, Penn, Princeton and Cornell, have expressed interest in purchasing the product upon it’s release.

Source: Rob Hart, Optofluidics
Writer: Dana Henry

Think about your favorite bar or coffee shop. Sure, you enjoy the grub, the décor, even the snarky comments from the hipster behind the counter, but none of this would impress without decent music.

Sevenpop—an Israeli startup with U.S. headquarters in Center City—mines our timeless urge for good tunes, integrating mobile requests into a business' preexisting music player. According to cofounder John Vairo, when patrons influence the sound system, they’re more likely to stay—and spend—giving the business a competitive edge.

Recently, the company closed its first round of financing with a $400,000 investment from JanVest. They’re currently releasing the United States version of Sevenpop across the country.

Cofounders Nuke Goldstein and Eyal Bernstein created the product at a bar in Tel Aviv that later became their alpha test site. When the team asked for a computer to run the system, the bar explained their only apparatus was the music player. "We concluded [Sevenpop] should focus on the music and the product was shaped," says Vairo.

The resulting “Social Jukebox” provides a lean solution for three popular multimedia systems. (The company says they will adapt their software for other systems.) They've landed in bars, cafes and DJ booths, and expect to add grocery chains, gyms and sports arenas to their client base. The company sells added social features, but Vairo says the best way to approach a market segment of this size is to keep the basic software free. “Once [the client] is up and running, the system is theirs for as long as they want it," he says.

Source: John Vairo, Sevenpop
Writer: Dana Henry

South Philly’s “light” industrial core—a.k.a. Washington Avenue West—just got a lot heavier. NextFab is expanding their stable of high-tech gear and community of inventors to a 21,000-square-foot warehouse at Washington Avenue and 21st Street. The grand opening party is scheduled for January 17.

The doors open wide enough for an onsite forklift. They guard cutting-edge equipment, including a five-axis waterjet cutter and a computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine. Additional room allows for private member offices, a sizeable woodshop, conference and class rooms, and a walk-in booth for painting hefty objects. The new site also includes a television lounge and satellite Cafe L'Aube.

“There is enough space for all of us to think and work in comfort,” says founder and president Evan Malone.

Three years ago, NextFab made news, pioneering a space where emerging makers could access 3D printers, laser cutters, textile machines and other advanced technologies for a monthly fee. Their short legacy of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) achievement for Philadelphia at large includes work with Optofluidics, UE Life Sciences, Philadelphia Futures and Atomic Robotics.  

Although an impressive list of creative enterprises—including Pocket Grill, Master of None and Maria Eife Jewelry & Design—has hatched under their roof, most do not come to NextFab with know-how. "We helped hundreds of people with no technical background understand and learn to use digital fabrication technology," says Malone.

He adds that anyone with an affinity for technology and creativity is welcome to check out the space. Co-making, after all, is about sharing. "[The grand opening party] is our chance to show off the amazing new capabilities our members and clients now have access to," says Malone, "and to entice other curious Philadelphians inside."

Source: Evan Malone, NextFab
Writer: Dana Henry

Establishing a quality reputation in the age of social media is a challenge. It takes just one irate customer to drag down a Yelp profile and leave a permanent stain on a virtual record.  

For businesses trapped in twitter-roulette, Yorn (Your Opinion Right Now) circumvents the online commotion with real time customer feedback. The two-year-old company is doubling business every quarter, recently reaching 2,000 accounts including Deutsche Bank, Intuit, UPS, Cisco and Stanley Black and Decker. The good news is they’ve also moved to Philly. 

Unofficially, the company left Conshohocken for 24th and Chestnut Streets in October, but they plan to open the doors of the new office before the end of 2012. Yorn recently added seven employees (rounding out a core team of twelve) and seeks additional leadership in software development, marketing and product management.
 
Rick Rasansky, founder and CEO, refers to the company's product as "the anti-social network to a certain degree," but it could also be considered an antidote: When experiencing a problem, today’s constomer consults their computer in lieu of confronting the manager. Yorn mends the broken channel for businesses, coneferneces, hospitals, and hotels with a unique URL or QR-code. Customers access the code--displayed on cards, posters and other promotional materials--and receive a temporary app to send comments and ratings directly to the owner.
 
Rasansky says he scouted a location near two prime clients: Drexel and Penn. Of course, the spot also provides access to another resource—"The base of talent that we’re going after is absolutely centered in here in Center City," he says. "Not to put down Conshohocken, but the action is here in Philly."

Source: Rick Rasansky, Yorn
Writer: Dana Henry

Mobile technology presents a marketing conundrum: Personal devices gather valuable specifics about the viewer, including location and activity, but render web advertisements distorted and invasive. Malvern-based TapCLIQ is changing all that.

After 14 years directing software development and strategic partnership at SAP AG,  founder and CEO Chirantan Bhatt created a "customer engagement platform" that responds to user-generated feedback in real time. The company recently graduated from Project Liberty Digital Incubator and is hiring data scientists, software engineers, and marketing and sales directors.

Bhatt says he’s always the first to try a new gadget, but finds "an abundance of annoying and unrelated advertisement constantly appearing on mobile applications." When his four-year-old daughter came to him with a file downloading over the game app she was playing Bhatt realized the problem was urgent. 

"Advertising completely interrupts the user," says Bhatt. "[Mobile devices] can’t have ads like a web page."

According to a 2012 study by Azullo, 80 percent of smartphone users have already forgotten all the mobile ads they’ve seen in the past 6 months. Yet internationally, spending on mobile advertisement is predicted to reach $28 billion by 2016 (based on reports from International Data Corp.).

Big ad companies—including Google, Real Media 24/7 and Flurry—are still stuck on display ads, explains Bhatt. TapCLIQ, conversely, doesn't asks users to leave their app and offers related purchases and commenting options for their current activity. Now in private beta, the company has created 1 million interactions with over 20,000 mobile users.

"We have an intense focus on user experience," says Bhatt. "That means better ads, coming at the right time, with more relevance to the customer."

Source: Chirantan Bhatt, TapCLIQ
Writer: Dana Henry

The Old City-based software company DMG CTRL (Damage Control) has outgrown its 2,200 square foot office above Indy Hall. With twenty employees, many hired through apprenticeships, DMG CTRL has doubled its staff in the last year. On Monday, December 3, the company moved to a 5,000-square-foot space on N. 5th Street. At their current growth-rate, Jason Allum, the company’s cofounder, expects them to fill the space over the next few years.
 
The new address will include a classroom, a conference room, a kitchen and more windows as well as ping pong, a pool table and a beer keg. That may sound more clubhouse than growing company, but Allum—who was hired as a software engineer at age 16—says employees don’t hate coming to work. 

"A lot of this space is built to facilitate communication," he says. "It’s a very sedentary job, so you have to have dedicated space for play."  
 
A 2012 study by AIG Consulting found that 68 percent of software companies surveyed had more failed projects than successful ones. DMG CTRL often rewrites broken software from larger companies. Allum says his company has built over a hundred products and only two had less-than-optimal results. He attributes the company’s phenomenal success rate to the “collective intelligence” of his team. Each project item is tracked using revision control software and every piece of code is peer reviewed. Employees sit at shared tables and are encouraged to move around.
 
"It takes a fairly anti-social group of people—nerds—and makes them talk to each other," says Allum. "Everything is done by somebody and checked by somebody else. If you’re reviewing my code and I have more experience, you have a chance to learn my tricks. People are allowed the freedom to fail which is huge."
 
Allum was a founding member and initial financer of Indy Hall. Shortly after launch, Allum and cofounder, Mac Morgan, posted a Craigslist ad calling for a "minion." He hired a cellphone salesman with no background in computers. The new employee was given menial tasks—stuff Allum didn’t want to pay experienced professionals to do—and progressively moved to more challenging ones. Today that former minion writes software for the products he used to sell.

Since then, DMG CTRL has hired a waitress, a warehouse employee, several Art Institute graduates, retail personnel and a "Russian math wiz." They also get regular visits from a 78-year-old chemist who is learning to write code.
 
"We let people float through the orbit," explains Allum. "If it works out we’ll hire them. I’m a firm believer that there’s way more people who can do this stuff than know they can do this stuff—or that the world would allow to do this stuff."

Source:Jason Allums, DMG CTRL
Writer: Dana Henry

It’s not every day a plainclothes professional opera singer performs to the hum of industrial knitting machines. Nonetheless, it was the perfect display of synergy for the opening ceremony of Drexel’s Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies (ExCITe) Center at the University City Science Center. Held on Wednesday, November 28, the celebration showcased surprising STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) combinations and permutations.

"In academia, it’s hard to collaborate outside your department," says Dr. Youngmoo Kim, director of the ExCITe center and professor of computer engineering at Drexel. "The whole purpose [of ExCITe] is to create multidisciplinary projects at this nexus between technology and the arts. There’s so much synergy there."

The 11,000-square-foot facility features conference rooms, countless desktops, sound equipment and a knit lab, all available to Drexel faculty, staff and students, regional partner institutions and other universities. The space will host hackathons and other tech and arts related events.

Opening demos included an app for understanding live classical music and a digitally-enhanced grand piano. ExCITe also houses and provides seed funds to three startup projects: a Microsoft Kinect therapy game for people with cerebral palsy; a virtual reality opera project made in partnership with the Philadelphia Opera Company; and Sonic City, a Breadboard project incorporating city sounds into musical pieces.

The Shima Seiki Haute Technology Knit Lab houses four top grade fabric machines, a donation from Shima Seiki Manufacturing in Japan worth $1 millon. The facility is unheard of in academia and, according to Kim, rivals Nike’s Design Lab. Each apparatus prints items designed on CAD software; during the grand opening event, the machines produced knit kitchen gloves, custom seamless dresses and three-ply blankets.  

A knit-bot machine prints three-dimensional fabrics complete with electronic sensors. At the opening, a staff member hooked a spiraled piece of fabric into a control system and rolled it across the table remotely. Observers seemed impressed by the novelty, but Kim says knit-bot technology has implications for the future: One day you might be able to change the color and cut of your shirt with the press of a button, and sensors-enhanced fabrics could help individuals monitor health and weight. In addition, skins from these textiles could make plastic robots more resilient, while external sensors could help disaster-relief androids respond immediately to challenging environments.

Kim runs Drexel's Music Entertainment Technology Labratory, home to robots that dance and play music. He conceived of the center nearly two years ago while holding cross-departmental faculty meetings as a solution to academic silos. It wasn’t long before other key local institutions, including the Science Center, the Philadelphia Opera Company and the Franklin Institute, joined the planning.

"We can do great things here with Drexel folks, but there’s great people with ideas at Penn, UArts, Philadelphia University, Temple and Swarthmore," says  Kim. “They’re people that we know. A lot of people throughout the region, not just in academia, helped shape this."

Source: Youngmoo Kim, Drexel ExCITe
Writer: Dana Henry

In November 2010, police in rural Escondido, California discovered a house with over nine pounds of explosives and several industrial chemicals. It was a challenging situation: Authorities needed to obtain evidence while guaranteeing the safety of the neighbors and their own personnel.

The presence of such materials, along with radiological and biological hazards, constitutes an “unconventional threat” for homeland security. The Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Program (RDTEP) of Gettysburg-based Tripwire Operations Group are experts in products and training methods used to navigate this complex terrain. They’ve moved to the Science Center and plan to hire entry-level positions—including field work logicians, labratory technicians and scientists—in early 2013.

"Most of our focus is on helping first responders and war fighters safely identify and handle those other materials that are dangerous but aren’t typical," explains Jesse Taylor, lead chemist for Tripwire RDTEP.

According to Taylor, homeland security doesn’t just protect us from the "underwear bomber," the man who caused a 2009 plane fire while carrying explosives inside his pants. Public safety officials at sporting events and political rallies do "sweeps" of personal belongings using the same products and services. A natural disaster can pose threats similar to an intentional attack. Those involved in preserving public safety—including firefighters, local police and medical technicians—need to handle unconventional threats safely.

Currently, Tripwire’s RDTEP is working on independent sensor verification tools and Render Safe Procedures [RSP], including remote handling of materials. Their move to University City provides better access to client agencies including the Federal Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, as well as municipal police and firefighter divisions.

"After 9/11, [homeland security] has become much more of a public issue," says Taylor. “It’s more prominent in the public eye and in popular culture. Beyond what we provide to war fighters, there are a lot of similar issues that come up for state, local and regional emergency response teams. There certainly is a bigger picture to homeland security than terrorism."

Source: Jesse Taylor, Tripwire
Writer: Dana Henry

On the heels of the passage of Pennsylvania’s Act 152, Joanne Lang, founder and CEO of AboutOne, is leading the way for local B-corporations. The company, which developed an app that simplifies access to an individual’s health records and other vital documents, has reached over 100,000 caregivers and is now tackling a brand new challenge—the Department of Human Services.  

The Communication Station is AboutOne’s co-brand for guardians of foster children. Nationally, there are over 600,000 children in foster care. Because most of these children change families multiple times, tracking health, education and even personal memories is a challenge. The Communication Station will provide a private place for those files and motivate foster parents to store important documents with gift vouchers. The platform is particularly enticing for state governments—they are now federally mandated to furnish medical data for foster children when they turn 18.

"We can save [social services] months of time and money meeting their legal requirements by providing that information for them," says Lang. "We have to take small steps and get this version working. In the longer term, we can use it to grow the company because we will have a proven solution to sell to states and cities all over the USA."

The new brand has received an endorsement from Mayor Nutter and DHS Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose. The Child Welfare League of America is already organizing a consortium of municipal and state clients. Lang expects to pilot The Communication Station for The City of Philadelphia and is reaching out for crowd funding through IndieGoGo.

"The Communication Station needs some special features and a special game design," she explains. "We can’t fund this co-brand by ourselves. I had a choice: sit and wait, or do what I do best as an entrepreneur—overcome barriers, think of new and lateral ways to fund this small pilot quickly, and move forward."

Since launching over a year ago, AboutOne has grown their staff by 300 percent and signed with larger caregiving businesses. Lang, who is also a mother of four sons, was recently selected for Dell’s Founders Club. Despite her national ambitions, Lang says she’s determined to stay in Philadelphia, and credits Mayor Nutter and Philadelphia Startup League for helping so many grow their dreams.

"A woman in technology—with children—can grow a startup company here in PA and be successful here in PA," she says. "You don’t need to move to Silicon Valley or anywhere else."

Source: Joanne Lang, AboutOne
Writer: Dana Henry 

Washington Avenue West—the gritty home to plumbers, mechanics and supply outlets—is the new landing spot for Philly’s next generation of fabricators. After months of construction, NextFab Studio is set to reopen in a 21,000-square-foot workspace nearly five times the size of their former University City location. Unfortunately, due to some delays, the grand opening celebration has been moved to January 17, 2012.

NextFab has helped springboard a local ecosystem of high-tech creative entrepreneurship, a community that now includes Breadboard Philly and Drexel’s ExCITe. In addition to readily available 3D printers, laser cutters and robotics paraphernalia, Philly’s “Gym for Innovators” will now feature a loading dock, a crane, an industrial textile machine and an auto lift. Stay tuned for more information on their new facilities and grand opening party.

Source: NextFab
Writer: Dana Henry

It’s great to hear a company wants to "go green" or pay a "living wage," but for the startups at Good Company Ventures social capital is at the core of their operations. The 2012 graduates—a group that features low-cost geothermal technology, a social crowd-sourcing platform and a green laundry service with an eye towards workforce development—are in the midst of first-round fundraising, and at least one company has gained nearly $1 million in investment. These innovators will join leaders of the public and private sector on Tuesday November, 20 at First Round Capital, for a public graduation reception and networking event.

Regalii, one of the graduating businesses, enables Latino immigrants to send remittances in the form of store credit via text. While their service has a clear social value—it protects the sender from predatory fees and the receiver from robbery—the stores lose value because they sell credits to Regalii in bulk. According to Zoe Selzer, executive director of the Good Company Group, this kind of value proposition triangle (where the purchaser is not the benefactor) can make the social venture business model tricky.
 
“We look for companies where the market strategy is not necessarily intuitive," Selzer says. "A lot of accelerator programs focus on the development of the product. We assume that people in our incubator have a product of pretty good value and what they really need to focus on is how to translate their good idea into something really valuable in the marketplace."
 
Good Company merged with Green Village Incubator in March 2012. The ventures are operational when accepted into the accelerator program and spend each week working through issues a potential investor would raise. They get feedback and advice from a panel of business and venture capital experts as well as their peers. The process often results in a complete reworking of the company’s value proposition. Edi Bikes, which relocated from Chicago, entered the program expecting to provide bike customers roadside assistance. They now focus on commuter-centric engineering.  
 
"[These companies] can’t just assume that their social mission is going to carry them forward," says Selzer. "You have to answer all [investor] questions if you want to be considered for a second meeting. We’re not giving any passes because you're trying to save the world."
 
Over the past three years, Good Company Ventures graduates have raise over $30 million of investment. This year, Wash Cycle Laundry will graduate and hire its sixteenth employee. Other startups, including Start Some Good, continue attracting venture capital and national press, proving companies that do good can also do well. 

Source: Zoe Selzer, Good Company Ventures
Writer: Dana Henry

Last year Eyal (Al) Azoulay, co-founder and CEO of Rumble and self-proclaimed news junky, bought his first tablet. He expected to view his favorite titles on the go, but there was not a single app for his choices. He was not alone in his disappointment—according to a study by Kontera, mobile accounts for 27 percent of all content consumed on the web (up 430 percent from last year) and news outlets, particularly traditional print media, continue losing readership as they struggle to adapt.
 
Rumble, based in Philadelphia and Tel-Aviv, and accelerated at the Project Liberty Digital Incubator at the Inquirer/Daily News offices, is a catchall content distribution system for mobile devices poised to conquer this digital divide. They’ve secured $1 million in investments and are hiring rapidly: Seven positions are currently open in sales and marketing.
 
Over the past five years, the print to web shift has resulted in billions of lost revenue for the newspaper industry. Mobile content represents an entirely different set of complex technologies and user interaction issues, and can be overwhelming to newspaper managers who are down to 70 percent of their heyday budget and workforce. "[Newspaper managers] honestly don’t even have the time to think about a strategy across mobile, let alone execute one," says Azoulay.
 
The problem is even more severe for mega publishers such as Conde Nast, Gannett, Lee, Knight Rider and Mcklechy—often each title will create individual apps. "As a mega publisher, your network of titles is completely fragmented," says Azoule. "Rumble offers the mega publisher one platform to unify all titles over all mobile devices and leverages the entire network as one."
 
Newspapers, Azoulay points out, are experts in content creation, not software. With the fourth version of the iPad rolling out after just two years, it’s hard to justify the major upfront investment required for the print-mobile switch. Rumble offers a backend system that publishes across all mobile devices and hosts a complete set of content-related features, including mobile-specific layout, performance tracking, revenue modeling and social media tools. After newspapers, Azoulay and his cofounders—Itai Cohen and Uyen Tieu, who’s served in executive sales and marketing positions for Microsoft and Viacom—expect to add trade publications and television news clients with similar needs.
 
There are over 1,600 newspapers and 2,000 university publications. Currently, news media gains only $1 from mobile platforms for every $9 they’ve lost, but Azoulay believes that’s all about to change. Mobile usage reveals not just consumers’ demographics and preferences, but where they are and what they’re doing. Of the $30 billion dollars spent annually on advertising, seventy percent come from local ads and no one is more capable of capitalizing on that revenue than newspapers.
 
"If you couple that with the highly sophisticated targeting available through mobile, you get one of the best combinations you can leverage," he says. "There’s no question that we will learn how to monetize on mobile devices very well."

Source: Eyal Azoulay, Rumble
Writer: Dana Henry