By Allan Maurer
RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC—Preparing to leave his previous company, Nicholas Napp dug through his enormous pile of accumulated notes and files back in the summer of 2006. It took five days to find the materials he needed to put together a sales training manual for his replacement and he thought, “There must be a better way to do this.”
That thought, which has spurred the founding of many a company, led to his starting disruptorMonkey, which is developing software tools to “help manage the longtail of corporate data,” says Napp.
The “longtail” refers to the book by Wired editor Chris Anderson on the idea that instead of selling a few items to many consumers, more and more companies such as Amazon, iTunes, and others sell many, many items, each of which sells to only a few people. Anderson called that a longtail curve.
Applying the idea to information, Napp explains, means there is a longtail curve in corporate data. Frequently used data, usually the top 5 percent, is the easiest to find, but much of the rest is unmanaged. “Some analysts estimate that the unmanaged data is 80 to 85 percent of the total,” Napp says.
Data rises to the sun
Quoting research by IDC, Napp points out that “This year the amount of digital data collected would make a column 12 books wide that would reach the sun (93 million miles away).
At the current rate of data expansion, by 2012, the same column would go to Pluto and back, the IDC says. “The stuff that’s not used frequently is growing and growing every year,” adds Napp.
While that enormous and growing collection of corporate data is not needed frequently, “That does not mean it doesn’t have value,” says Napp. “At certain times, in certain circumstances, it may be extremely useful, even if it’s not used at all the rest of the time. But it gets harder to find every year and the problem is only going to get worse.”
Napp says many large enterprise data management tools are “a pain to setup and tricky to use. The idea of using a sledgehammer tool like that just isn’t practical for everyone.” Lots of other tools, from those based on filing systems to wiki’s are not efficient when looking at enormous amounts of data, he says.
Seeks $250,000
His company has been working since July of 2006 to develop software to make it easier to find and use that huge mass of unmanaged information. “We expect to prove the basic concepts behind the technology this month and to release a product by the end of the fourth quarter 2007,” Napp says. “We’re currently working with three different test sites representing different segments of our markets.”
While he cannot identify the companies, he says “One is a fairly well known local firm.”
The company, which will present its business plan to investors at the NC Council for Entrepreneurial Development’s “Start-up Speed Dating,” program for early stage presenters at the CED Venture 2007 conference next week, is seeking $250,000 in funding.
Napp co-founded disruptorMonkey with Logan Holt, whom he describes as a “Five 9s” programmer, meaning he get the last 9 in a system that has to be up 99.999 percent of the time, as CTO, and Andre Kirk, a graphic designer with strengths in digital repurposing.
Name proved sticky
The company was named after Napp’s 18-month old daughter. “She was skilled at climbing before she could walk, so we called her Monkey. She was also skilled at unfiling anything. She’s quite a disruptive force, but like all disruptive forces, there’s plenty of good in that.”
The name was originally used because he needed business cards when he went back to Silicon Valley, where he’d previously worked for an animation company, to test the waters for basing there. “But it clearly stuck in people’s minds. So it went from being a throwaway joke name to something that’s quite sticky.”
Napp’s previous experience included considerable marketing and he notes, “There’s a lot to be said for words and concepts that are sticky. Branding is more important than ever and many start-ups are terrible at it.”
Napp eventually decided to locate his new venture in the Research Triangle because of the region’s openness to new ideas, differences in costs between the RTP and California, and other factors.
Napp’s new venture has already signed up top tier advisors, including Scot Wingo, founder and CEO of Channel Advisor, Steve Wiehe, CEO and president of SciQuest, Sam Bayer, CEO of MarketAcuity and Peter Mucha, an assitant professor of applied mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He says that John Glushik of Intersouth Partners has also been very helpful to the company, although Intersouth has no formal relationship with them and generally does not invest seed capital.
© 2007, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.
