Startup of the Day - Dyyno

The company of the day is Dyyno, based in the US. Dyyno is the leading social software platform that allows anyone to customize, manage and share rich media. You will find below an interview with Raj Jaswa, the CEO, President and Chairman of Dyyno. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.dyyno.com


Interview with Raj Jaswa, the CEO, President and Chairman of Dyyno

Who are you?

Dyyno is the leading social software platform that allows anyone to customize, manage and share rich media instantly and affordably with personal and business online communities.

What did you do before creating your company?

Raj Jaswa is the CEO, President and Chairman of Dyyno’s Board. Prior to Dyyno, Raj was the President of TiE Silicon Valley, the largest nonprofit dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship from 2005-2008, and Director of TiE SV for 2003-2004. Raj is also a Member on TiE’s Global Board of Trustees. From 1996 to 2002, Raj served as co-founder, Chairman, CEO and President of Selectica (Nasdaq: SLTC), an enterprise software company. During Raj's tenure, Selectica was named to the Forbes 500, Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500, Software 500, Inc 500, and Interactive Week 500. Selectica reached a peak market value of $5 billion in 2000. From 1988 to 1996, Raj served as co-founder, President, and Director of Opti (Nasdaq: OPTI), and previously as EVP of Sales and Marketing. Opti was the world's largest supplier of PC chipsets. Opti reached a peak market value of $350 million in 1995.

Raj serves, or has served, as a Director of Jareva (Symantec), Appstream (Symantec), Blue Pumpkin Software (Verint), and FusionOps. Earlier in his career, Raj worked for Intel, General Electric, and Chips and Technologies. Raj received a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, a masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto and a masters of Business Administration from Stetson University, Deland, Florida.

Raj and wife Kalpana have charitable interests through the Jaswa Charitable Foundation, whose primary beneficiaries include El Camino Hospital SAHC, India Community Center, the Blind Foundation for India, Chinmaya Mission, and Bidada Medical Camp.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘company of the day’ per Microsoft?

We feel very special and proud of being featured by such a prestigious partner.

How did you get the idea? What s the genesis?

Uri Raz (Founder) realized that there was no easy way his son could show his friends video game tricks he’d discovered. Uri teamed up with Eric Setton, Prof Bernd Girod, Pierpaolo Baccichet and Vivek Gupta, to start Dyyno. The team recognized a huge market gap in the applications and platform for social and collaborative software and developed the framework for the Dyyno platform.

What do you sell? What is your company’s mission?

The Dyyno platform supports enterprises, SMB, community broadcasting, and consumer markets through the following offerings:

o Dyyno Broadcast Station ($10K - $100K, plus recurring revenue)

o Dyyno WebEx plug-in ($100/mo for SMB)

o Dyyno Personal Channel ($10/month), Dyyno Business Channel ($100/mo)

o OEM offerings

What is your market?

Companies, online communities and individuals who want and/or need to instantly share rich media (video, audio, text and applications) in a customizable, manageable way to engage with, and grow, an audience or community.

Any clients? References? Partners?

Several customers including Xfire, www.xfire.com (part of MTV). References / Partners available upon request.

Funding history? VCs? BA?

$7M series A. Artiman Ventures, Startup Ventures.

Growth? Internationalization?

Our platform is used in over 140 different countries.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

25, 19 developers.

Are you hiring? If yes, what? Where?

Yes - Marketing, Sales, and System Application Engineers.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

Microsoft Visual Studio, the industry reference.

Do you have any Software IP? Is there something that you’re the only one to do on the market?

Unique State-of-the-Art Technology:

o A real-time stream management and directory services to generate live, branded community channel guides and channels from millions of distinct streams

o HyReS™ - Proprietary, patent-pending, hybrid streaming solution that uses redundant streaming over error-resilient, multicast trees of viewers to reliably provide QoS at targeted SLA levels

o Seamless integration of application capture, high-quality, industry standard A/V encoding, and adaptive live streaming to the distributed web community

Who’s your role model?

Zinedine Zidane, he uses his head in so many different ways.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet areas?

CPUs.

Looking for funding? If yes, how much?

No.

What about the BizSpark Program? What do you think? Are you going to join? Why?

BizSpark has really been a fantastic program for Dyyno and all the Dyyno employees feel very proud of having such a prestigious partner. The BizSpark team opened many doors for us at Microsoft and helped initiate many interesting discussions. We are very grateful for this opportunity.

Any advice to young Software entrepreneurs?

Build the best possible team.

Listen to customers.

Start a revenue stream as early as possible.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Our technical dream-team is a core group of 11 passionate Ph.D.s from all the corners of the world (including the US, China, India, France, Italy, Philippines, Japan, Germany, etc.), it’s a mesmerizing image of what Silicon Valley knows how to do best. We thrive on diversity and share a common goal of being the best at what we do, from our 2-time IPO CEO, to our serial entrepreneur founder and all the way to the technical team, which shares over 100 scientific publications.