Towards Personalization: Strands Founder Francisco Martin (Part 2)

SM: Did you cash out and make a clean break from Intelligent Software Components?

FM: Yes. Part of the deal with Banco Santander was the partial purchase of shareholder equity. I cashed out and took sabbatical leave in September of 2002. In February of 2003 I moved to Oregon. I met a professional in Oregon who is an expert in Machine Learning, Tom Dietterich. I went to work with him trying to learn more things and I also worked for DARPA for a while. I was trying to do things with DNA as well as add a few new layers onto the Internet including the Knowledge Plain to better understand what is going on with the Internet. This was the basis for the self healing capabilities of the internet.

By 2003 I was one of the heavy users of iTunes because I left my CD collection in Barcelona. I bought a lot of tracks from them. At that time I think they had 400,000 tracks and it was very hard for me to decide what to but next.

SM: You wanted iTunes to have functionality similar to what Amazon does for books?

FM: Yes. I noticed that even if iTunes was tracking the number of times I played my tracks, which it has done from day one, they would have some knowledge. However, if they could track not only the number of times but the sequence Iwas following when I played my tracks then they could realize I was selecting tracks based on my mood. That is the genesis of how I came to recognize the need for a new kind of recommendation engine based purely on behavior. That type of engine could serve me with things I like.

I developed a basic engine and I ran a small experiment. I got iTunes libraries from 200 people and I conducted a number of experiments. I proved I could improve the recommendations, better than what Amazon was doing. I decided I would start a company based on recommendation engines.

Once again I called up friends and family and some of folks who profited from the last company when we sold it. I decided to create an investment company with just friends and family, I think there were 250 people in it initially. We managed to get around $6M to invest in Strands.

We brought in some institutional investors as well at the end of 2003. Officially we started the Strands company in Barcelona in 2004. At that point and time I was still a researcher at the University. I left the University in 2004 to do this full time.

SM: Who was your institutional investor?

FM: It was Debaeque which at the time was a pretty small VC out of Barcelona. I think I met I met the two founders back in 2000 by chance. I met one of the founders on a flight from Paris to Barcelona. As we left the plane he told me he wanted to invest. This was in 2005.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Towards Personalization: Strands Founder Francisco Martin
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