By: Efrain Viscarolasaga
Jeff Pulver is at it again. The chief executive officer of pulver.com Inc., co-founder of Vonage Inc. and a telecommunications industry luminary is using this week’s Voice on the Net (VON) trade show in Boston — which he also founded — to launch his newest venture: Vivox Inc.
This week, with a new name (it operated as LibreTel.com during its development stage) and six employees, Vivox moves into its new home in Wayland.
Pulver, who will act as the company’s chairman, has already helped Vivox land a first round of venture funding worth $6 million from Canaan Partners and GrandBanks Capital. The funding will be used to bring the product to market and develop new applications.
Ryan Moore, a principal at GrandBanks who has been with the firm since its inception in 1999, brought the deal to GrandBanks. This was the first deal Moore has executed from start to finish, and, as a result, he was promoted to general partner last week, the firm reports.
According to Charley Lax, founder and managing general partner at GrandBanks, Pulver’s title is not honorary. He will be intimately involved in Vivox’s development. “He’ll be an active participant. I don’t think Jeff does anything in a passive way,” Lax said.
Initially, the new company will focus on two markets — Internet dating and online gaming. The startup is based on a technology that has been operating behind the scenes at Pulver’s voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service, FreeWorld Dialup, and will provide online communities with application-specific embedded communications services. In other words, users of online dating services would be able to speak with other participants without revealing personal details. In the gaming world, the platform can connect multiplayer gamers via voice, as an integrated part of the multimedia gaming experience.
The goal is to drive greater interaction among online communities. The platform is designed to give these kind of multiperson, interactive online services more of a community feel by providing instant voice communications for people using the services.
Both markets, said Robert Seaver, who has been named CEO of Vivox, could run in the billions of dollars as online services. How lucrative the addition of VoIP communications to those services could be, however, is still unknown. Vivox’s success will be driven by the success of interactive online services and the companies that deploy them. Companies like Newton’s WorldWinner Inc. or portals that offer interactive services like Yahoo Inc. will be Vivox’s customers — and as those services go, so shall Vivox.
When introduced to the idea, Stephen Killeen, president and CEO of WorldWinner said it could have merit. “It’s interesting,” he said. “Everything we are trying to do in the industry is to create an interactive community. The tighter the community, the more loyal your users will be and the more often they will play. VoIP could ratchet up the intensity and entertainment value.”
Lax calls Vivox “Skype for the rest of the world,” indicating that while it is a VoIP service, it will be embedded in applications and available to any application user, rather than just users of a particular VoIP service, such as Skype.
In addition, the platform is based on open standards and will be interoperable with most protocols.
But as a VoIP application, will it have to compete with the likes of Vonage or Skype, which was bought by eBay Inc. last week?
“We don’t consider Vonage or Skype competitors,” said Lax. “We actually consider them helpful because they are bringing VoIP to the mainstream. Today, VoIP is still a bit of a curiosity. Those companies are helping to make the technology familiar to everyone.”
Vivox is positioning itself as a first mover in the space, with no substantial competition in the market — a notion supported by Killeen, who said no one had approached WorldWinner with a similar offering.
Seaver said the product is fully developed and ready to go. The platform is in use with FreeWorld Dialup, and the company is in the implementation phase with several customers, he said.
