Plug-and-Play Cloud Storage At Home: Cloud Engines CEO Daniel Putterman (Part 3)

Sramana: Did you come to those conclusions by the time you started your third company?

Daniel Putterman: I came to those conclusions during the middle of my third company. I started a company called Mediabolic. We created the ability for consumer to experience multimedia on TVs and other devices; they were used to consuming media on versus only on PCs. We licensed that technology to manufactures such as Sony and Panasonic, who would put their names on it. Eventually we sold that company to Macrovision, and the sale was quite successful.

For a small company we were wildly successful. One of the problems with that is the amount of complication and shared work it takes. If you land a deal with Sony and are going to take products to market, the infrastructure alone from a team perspective is unbelievable. We used to go by the term “design wins.” I had a special pen for signing special deals at my desk. Some of the deals were tens of millions of dollars in future revenues. The year we sold the company we had 27 design wins.

Traditional consumer branding had to go through so many stages. Consumer electronics companies did not know how to get our vision; all they knew was how to put features inside of products. We took matters into our own hands and we would introduce design concepts that we would not put under our own brand. We would build reference designs that a consumer electronics company could take and launch them. We won awards for that and got a lot of press from it.

Sramana: What part of the design were you doing?

Daniel Putterman: Everything. We knew the software because we were a software company; however, it is very hard to imagine software running inside of a consumer appliance. So, we would create a small set top box that could be delivered by a cable TV company. We would develop a net-enabled TV and just leave the brand details off the TV so that consumer companies could envision their brand there.

Because of that, Mediabolic started getting brand reputation for a company that had no business being a brand. If you have been on the chip side before, you know how complex that ecosystem is. We had that team together and they wanted to stay together, so we sold Mediabolic and that team helped form Could Engines. They key team players are now at Cloud Engines. We are still a small company.

Sramana: How much did you sell Mediabolic for?

Daniel Putterman: The cash component was around $50 million, and there were other benefits as well. I did have to stay with Macrovision and I realized at the time I was fundamentally unemployable. My evolving passion remained around team building. In theory, I could see running my own show in the context of a larger company, but things deviate when I become passionate about subject matter and domain. I gave up a lot financially by not staying there, but passion calls. It was a very well-run company, but I had to follow my path.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Plug-and-Play Cloud Storage At Home: Cloud Engines CEO Daniel Putterman
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