BR Ventures Invests

SightSpeed, a startup company that had its beginnings in a Cornell laboratory, got another boost from Cornell when BR Ventures, a venture fund run entirely by Johnson School students, decided to invest seed funding in the company.

SightSpeed makes software that turns desktop computers into high-end videoconferencing machines, thanks to new technology developed at Cornell. "While high-quality videoconferencing has been the domain of the boardroom, SightSpeed makes it affordable for everyone," said CEO Brad Treat, MBA '02, who predicts the technology will fundamentally change the way people work and live.

"We have much more than a replacement for high-end videoconferencing," Treat said. "It's a tool that will significantly enhance collaboration between people via the Web and make human interaction much more personal."

"We believe SightSpeed has a truly unique value proposition," said MBA student Amit Nisenbaum, a BR Ventures fund manager and a director of BR Incubator, a Johnson student-run organization that provides business incubation services to fledgling businesses. While details on the size of the investment were not disclosed, the funding will build SightSpeed's technical staff and bring a corporate version of its product to market as early as this spring.

SightSpeed software offers on-screen images as good as the kind produced by costly corporate videoconferencing equipment. With the purchase of a basic $80 computer-mounted camera, a SightSpeed user can see, hear and talk with anyone with a standard high-speed Internet connection, another camera and the software. "The quality is not compromised," said Treat. The full-motion 30-frame-per-second video in full color is comparable to systems costing thousands of dollars. In contrast, previous efforts at low-cost desktop video technology produced results as jumpy and uneven as an old home movie, at 15 frames per second or less. "Studies showed it literally gave people headaches," he said.

A video-compression algorithm developed in Cornell's Discover Laboratory by Toby Berger, the Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor of Engineering, and Aron Rosenberg, B.S. '02, made the new technology possible. The research team studied how the eye perceives video images and, in essence, figured out what information could be eliminated to offer a more believable, less cumbersome image in real time. For example, in the new technology the edge of a person's hand is emphasized, while details such as the life lines in the palm are suppressed.

The approach is analogous to what MP3 does to produce high-quality sound. Less extraneous visual information means the application uses a bandwidth narrow enough for the system to run over a cable modem or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) Internet connection.

A select group of people are currently using the software and reporting back to SightSpeed on how they are putting it to use. Once the product goes to market, it will be leased to clients who will receive upgrades and technical support in return for a fee that starts at about $30 a month. They may share it with user groups at no additional fee. In addition to corporate conferencing, Treat predicted, "people eventually will use SightSpeed to connect with family and friends, check on their dog at home, monitor places that are unsafe for people to go."

Treat himself used the new software recently to sit in on a class at the Johnson School on initial public offerings that he had taken in 2001-02 as an MBA student of entrepreneurship. That same year he was introduced to engineering student Rosenberg, who was looking for help in turning the technology into a viable business.

Treat put together a business model and plan, with assistance from BR Incubator. He also found seed money and investors through the Cornell Entrepreneur Network, a national network of Cornell alumni that fosters career success. After assuming the CEO post following graduation, he moved the startup first to Baltimore and then to Berkeley, Calif., to join its investing firm, the Roda Group, whose two principals, Roger Strauch and Dan Miller, both Cornell '78, are active in the network.

Investing in SightSpeed allows BR Ventures to begin to diversify its portfolio, said Nisenbaum. The student-run venture fund selected its first investment, GNS (Gene Network Sciences), just last year. The Ithaca-based bioinformatics company creates computer simulations of human cancer cells and bacterial cells and tests out how certain drugs work on specific gene and protein drug targets in their "virtual" cell environment.

The student fund managers of BR Ventures hope that dollars to invest in future startups eventually will come from shares that their fund has in SightSpeed and GNS as well as future investments. Current funding comes from donations made to Cornell. The fund's advisers include Cornell alumnus Rob Ryan '69, former chief executive of Ascend Communications and this year's Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year; Rich Marin, chief executive officer of VC Fund B2B-Hive; and David BenDaniel, the Don and Margi Berens Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Johnson School.

For information about BR Ventures see http://brv.cornell.edu. For more on SightSpeed, see: www.SightSpeed.com.