At 34, John Funge is at the age when many of his friends are having babies. And those new babies keep showing up in his e-mail.
“We call them the giant baby e-mails,” Funge said. “You can only see the eye or the ear.”
“Giant baby e-mails,” or large picture attachments that clog your e-mail in-box, were the inspiration for Funge’s startup company.
Arlington-based Incando is developing “a next-generation personal media sharing service,” Funge said. Pickle.com is a one-stop shop for consumers who want to organize and share digital photos and videos.
Pickle is different from the myriad other photo- and video-sharing products on the market, said Funge, because consumers can organize their media with a system that looks similar to e-mail.
“People have already learned to manage hundreds of e-mails a day,” he said. “Rather than changing behavior, we put the product into a system people are already familiar with.”
Instead of setting up photo albums, Pickle users can organize their photos into different e-mail folders. Each folder is assigned a different e-mail address for picture- and video-sharing.
For example, you could send photos to friends from [email protected], and they can also e-mail their own pictures from the same event to that address.
Pickle.com recently launched a pilot program and is hoping to have the product on the market by June. But they’ll need more money to move forward. Funge and his team will make their sales pitch Wednesday at Capital Connection, the annual venture capital fair sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the District.
The startup funded the first phase of development through private investments, but is looking for about $4 million more to take it to the next level.
Funge said Incando’s presentation will also focus on Pickle’s ability to move seamlessly from picture- to video-sharing.
Taking videos “is already getting very easy with the cameras people have,” he said. “A video of your friends at a bar in Paris is a much more engaging experience than photos.”
Making the connection
» For the past 20 years, the Mid-Atlantic Venture Association has sponsored Capital Connection, a fair that connects up-and-coming companies with investors. Companies are given just eight minutes to make their sales pitch. Wednesday, 37 technology and software companies will present their ideas at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the District.
» Last year, venture capitalists invested nearly $1 billion in Washington-area
