Towards Personalization: Strands Founder Francisco Martin (Part 4)

SM: How do you make your recommendation software portable to mass utilization? FM: We have been working on something we call “Business Solutions”. The objective is to provide the recommender as a service for third parties. They can easily get recommendations integrated into their websites by utilizing our hosted platform. This is very cost effective.

Towards Personalization: Strands Founder Francisco Martin (Part 3)

SM: Had you already built an initial version of the software by the time you received your first round of funding? FM: At that point and time we had launched our first version of Recommender as an online service. We separated the Recommender engine from the final product since the very beginning. However, the best

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Towards Personalization: Strands Founder Francisco Martin (Part 2)

SM: Did you cash out and make a clean break from Intelligent Software Components? FM: Yes. Part of the deal with Banco Santander was the partial purchase of shareholder equity. I cashed out and took sabbatical leave in September of 2002. In February of 2003 I moved to Oregon.

Towards Personalization: Strands Founder Francisco Martin (Part 1)

Dr. Francisco Martin, serial entrepreneur and the CEO/Founder of Strands, has found his niche applying AI solutions to various technology problems. At Strands he has developed an intelligent agent which understands and learns your personal tastes via several different methods.

Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 8)

SM: Have you seen advertisers take advantage of the platforms? RY: Yes, we have. Advertisers are interested in, and this is not exclusive to applications, identifying methods that will result in more users having a higher level of engagement with them. Applications provide a terrific way to do that. It can be accomplished through a

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Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 7)

SM: Social networks are becoming the voice of a generation. RY: Another thing to think about is that people are fundamentally social. What is happening online is a reflection of social behavior in the real world. Sites like ours just enhancing natural behavior.

Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 6)

SM: A lot of rep firms have a reputation for having very high commissions, often upwards of 60%. Are your rep firms requiring commissions that high? RY: No, they are not. It is a volume and scale business. Compared to what it would cost us to build and hold our own sales force, as a percentage of

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Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 5)

SM: How did you fund the initial startup? Where did you get the funding? RY: We had a rolling round, primarily from friends and family, with a target goal of $250,000. The first $10,000 came from my dad.