Online Storage, Sharing of Videos
 Lars Krumme is
EVP & co-founder
|
|
What:
StashSpace.com, based in Winthrop, Okanogan County
Who: Lars Krumme, Executive Vice President
and
co-founder
What it does: Offers online video editing,
video storage and management for videos and photos
Employees: 18
History: Spinoff of
HomeMovie.com, which started in
1999, mainly to convert customers' home videos to DVD. Back then,
blank DVDs were selling for $45 and DVD burners cost thousands of
dollars. HomeMovie sold a DVD conversion for $99.
The company later began giving users Web-based tools to edit
video for burning on DVD. "The technology and market today is where we wanted to be six
years ago," Krumme said.
A new brand: HomeMovie is still around,
but in August the company launched the StashSpace brand to emphasize
video storage and video sharing. StashSpace helps users move videos onto
their computers, choose and edit specific scenes and upload them to
the company's servers. The software also acts as an offline photo and video manager.
Old business: Users still can send
videotapes to the company, which digitizes them and
uploads them to
a subscriber account. The fee is $5 per tape.
A trendy business: Online video sharing
is one of the hottest Web trends around these days. But Krumme said
that unlike YouTube, StashSpace works with long-form video
sharing — those
three hours of zoo-trip tape sitting in a shoebox somewhere.
Basic specs: The service works best
with the Windows operating system, but Krumme said a more limited
set of features is available to Mac users.
Rivals: StashSpace doesn't have a
direct competitor, Krumme said, but some companies compete in
certain areas of its business. One is JumpCut, a Web-based
video-editing company recently purchased by Yahoo!
Looking for funding: The company is
self-funded to the tune of about $4 million to date, but Krumme said
he is looking for venture capital and partnership opportunities.
In the next year: Krumme said the
company will launch a marketing push in the first quarter of 2007. It has also been talking to potential partners, such as
Microsoft's MSN unit, about combining some services.
Kim Peterson
October 23, 2006
Seattle Times
|