Nektoon AG / Memonic
|
| Location: |
Zurich |
| Foundation: |
2009 |
| Employees: |
9 |
| Investors: |
Trusts, Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) and Business Angel |
| Generated Capital: |
1.2 million Swiss Francs |
The young enterprise Nektoon, from Zürich, offers personal data archives on the internet. Memonic has already convinced more than 20 000 people.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) has worked out that the amount of data which is freely accessible on the World Wide Web has increased tenfold since 2006, to the almost unfathomable amount of 1.8 trillion gigabytes.
This development is similar to a hyperinflation. In the data world, however, there is no central banking system to oppose the data flood. Everyone who researches or uses online data professionally knows the consequences. Surveys show that people working for universities or the media, or those who specialise in marketing spend up to two thirds of their worktime searching for or organizing digital data.
“Tools such as Memonic are called for here“, explains Nektoon- CEO Dorian Selz confidently. Memonic is a small scale software which is docked onto the internet browser and allows the user to compile password-secure online archives. Users can copy parts of texts and pictures on the internet, transfer them to their Memonic archives, reuse them there or offer them to third parties.
Together with his four founding partners, Selz has big plans – Nektoon is to win over the world market. Not as a free of charge “nice-to-have“ but as a premium-rate service based on subscription. Selz realises, however, that a strong, competitive market already exists, especially in the USA, partly pushed by affluent venture capitalists.
“We have to outwit the others“, explains the man who was awarded a doctorate in economic computing science at the HSG. For example, with a software architecture, based on so-called web services, catering for memory space rental and its growth without much hardware investment.
Web services can, at the same time, easily be multiplied and this is the prerequisite for Nektoon’s OEM-business. Selz cooperates with publishing houses which offer digital archives to their online customers. This feature has been available on www.nzz.ch since the beginning of December 2010. “The feedback is gratifying“, says Dorian Selz.
Currently, 20 000 users are registered directly at memonic.com, most of whom are still using the free basis version. Guiding these people towards the premium offer at cost, is going to be the main task at hand in the coming months.
Further technical and sales investments are necessary to tackle this task. Selz intends to go into a second financing round in late summer. Early-Stage-Investors and Business Angel are the focus of his attention as, together, they would be able to invest between one and two million Swiss Francs.