Seattle startup raises $1.3 million to encrypt the cloud
Kory Gill’s “a-ha” moment came in the form of a lightning bolt that struck his Seattle home and fried his computers. In the aftermath, his wife’s main concern was whether their digitally stored family photos had survived the blast.
“What more of a sign do you need to go start this company?” Gill recalled his wife asking him, who used the scare to leave a 20-year career at Microsoft (MSFT.O) and launch his own online backup company.
Three years later (Reuters first interviewed Gill in 2009), Gill and co-founder Marius Nita – a former Microsoft colleague – are seeing some traction with Newline Software Inc, having launched the first version of their online storage product, Exact, into the market in August.
Gill told Reuters they have just closed their latest financing round – Newline’s third – to bring their total funding to $1.3 million. The money, raised from friends and family, will be spent on improving the product, growing the brand and building a new software platform that will allow Newline to encrypt every piece of data stored online, or in “the cloud,” said Gill.
The platform called OPTIC (Online Privacy Technology In the Cloud) is an application programming interface (API) that Gill hopes will give Newline a competitive advantage over much larger rivals such as Carbonite and Mozy.
“There are a lot of online backup products out there so we needed a way to differentiate ourselves,” said Gill, referring to OPTIC as an “index to encrypt data in the cloud.”
Newline is really two different companies: an online data storage service (Exact) where users store files and a software program (OPTIC) that is able to protect and archive sensitive data stored anywhere on the Web.
Microsoft-i4i fight has big patent implications
What has been an interesting side show over the last few years, has taken on a much greater significance with the latest news that Microsoft’s appeal of a patent win by software minnow i4i will be heard by the Supreme Court.
When the two combatants eventual square off in Washington, D.C. sometime next spring, tech companies large and small will be closely following every legal punch thrown.
In the Microsoft camp will be heavyweights Google and Yahoo and trade groups such as the Computer & Communications Industry Association.
In the i4i corner will be all small firms who have ever patented a piece of software. Ironically this used to include Microsoft.
Loudon Owen, i4i’s chairman and CEO, was not surprised by the support Microsoft has received from Google and other tech giants in this fight.
“If a company already has a massive market share and a balance sheet that’s bigger than some small countries then, of course, it’s in their interest to maintain that position,” he said. Owen added it’s i4i’s assertion that the patent system is geared to help “innovative companies trying to acquire market share” to disclose their technology publicly in return for legal protection for their patents.
Many large firms view the U.S. patent system with some degree of skepticism, believing it leads to small firms patenting a piece of software in order to leverage it for a financial windfall at a later date.
Seattle startup looks for customers in the cloud
What would happen if your laptop was lost, stolen or accidentally dropped in a pool? Would you be able to easily retrieve all the megabytes of precious content housed in its memory banks?
These are the questions that drove Seattle software developer Kory Gill to leave an almost 20-year career at Microsoft and start his own online data-storage company. For years, Gill has sought a Web-based storage solution that would safeguard his priceless family photos, home movies and other important digital data, but never found a single solution that addressed all his specific needs.
“If these are irreplaceable files, you need to have the same type of insurance for your data as you would of any other asset, like your home or car,” said Gill, who often shared his frustrations with friend and fellow Microsoft programmer Marius Nita.
So last June they founded Newline Software, with the goal of giving their customers a more flexible, cost-efficient and “green” alternative to what is currently offered by the major players like Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
Gill hopes to pioneer the term “eco-digital preservation,” which he said refers to a way of storing data that is both environmentally friendly in that it uses less power, and more economical for customers. Newline Exact is the trademarked software Gill and Nita plan to debut in the upcoming weeks on their website 0xDA.com – the coder term for a hard return, or “new line” on your computer keyboard.
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