Presenting Company: Fotonauts
This company presented during Session 9: Rich Media.
- Website: http://www.fotonauts.com/
- Location: Palo Alto, CA
- Funding: $2,750,000
- CEO: Jean-Marie Hullot
- Press Release: Download
fotonauts is where people and images come together.
Today hundreds of millions of digital images are captured every year, with the 500 million digital cameras in circulation and the billion plus cell phones with cameras But... as soon as these images are captured, they are "captured". 93% of them remain on the storage device they were taken on, or on the users hard drive. The remaining 7% are shared only with small groups, mainly via email. The tiny minority that end up on online services have restrictive licenses - "all rights reserved" - and therefore are not useable by others.
fotonauts wants to liberate your images from "capture". Firstly, we make uploading so easy you do not need to think about it. Secondly, we enable your online service to connect you to others in the same or other online services, rather than restricting you to sharing only with those who use the same service. Finally, we enable the growth of Creative Commons licenses allowing the use of images by others. All this in the context of a real-time dialog between you and others working to create, enjoy, discover and collaborate.
fotonauts has a Mac and Windows Client and a Web based service.
founded by former Apple applications and NeXt CTO, Jean-Marie Hullot, and the team thet built iSync and iCal at Apple, and joined by Keith Teare, EasyNet and RealNames founder, as President, fotonauts is focused on taking social photography to the next level.
The company recently completed a seed financing round of $2.3m, led by Brad Silverberg at Ignition Partners and joined by Banexi (France); Digital Garage (Japan); SofttechVC (Bay Area); Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, Saul Klein and Ron Conway. Silverberg and Ito join Hullot and Teare on the Board of Directors.
