Floobs Has Startup Spirit Combined With Technology and Funding
Floobs, as I wrote earlier, is a mobile internet TV service for creating your own live channels anywhere. I stopped by their office yesterday and met co-founder Kai Lemmetty to talk about their company and plans for the future.
Floobs’ technological edge
In the very competitive field of live streamed online video, Floobs see their biggest rivals to be Kyte and Qik, which have a more mobile angle than UStream.tv or Stickam. What sets Floobs apart from their competitors is their technology, which is entirely Java-based. All their competitors have built their mobile clients on Symbian, which is easier to develop, but tied to this single platform. Floobs’ Java client is theoretically very easily ported to a wide range of mobile devices, including the iPhone. Floobs’ back end is also done with Java, they use open source Flash media server Red5 which they can easily modify for their purposes, unlike the competitors, who use Adobe’s Flash Media Server.
Kai showed me a demo of their mobile client that is still very much under development but I have to say I’m impressed. Compared to Qik (which I haven’t been able to get working on my own phone even after numerous tries), Floobs’ picture quality seems better and the lag between actual events and streamed video short (guesstimate 3-5 seconds).
Funding in place
Floobs seems to have their finances so far in order to keep on developing their service for some time. They see that the real market for this kind of a service will be ready in two years, so they are not speeding to go live any time soon. As the online live video market is moving very rapidly, they want to take their time to get the product right the first time.
Also to my question of their business model, Kai answered that Floobs is not in a rush and they want to to see where the market and business models develop.
They have secured funding from some angel investors and are apparently currently looking for some more funding.
Floobs’ startup mentality and pizza boxes
One thing that clearly is visible at their office is their true startup spirit. Young guys in quite a small space eating in front of their computers and while they are not working, they are relaxing by playing an 8-bit Nintendo.
When the biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat wrote an artice about them in January, they wrote that “Floobs feels like a true startup - the only thing missing is the empty pizza boxes”. Well, as Floobs wants to be taken as a serious startup, after the article the guys have begun a mission of collecting empty pizza boxes.
They have the right mentality, technological skills and funding, so they have a very good chance of creating something successful. If nothing else, then an exit, perhaps.
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Comments
Date: April 2, 2008 | Time: 6:52 pm
[...] future. Finnish startups that are present (at least to my knowledge) at the Next Web Conference are Floobs, TripSay, Scred and [...]
Date: July 14, 2008 | Time: 8:27 pm
It is really good to see a Startup with a focus on product, and user experience vs. a gotomarket NOW mentality. I probably read 100 blogs a day. I really appreciate yours on Finland Startups as well as your buddies from http://www.arcticstartup.com/. Let me know if you guys have any other cool mobile Startups in your pipeline.
redg-
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