Dave Drach

One of my favorite aspects of this job is that I get to see some of the most innovative companies in the world, and all I have to do is show-up. Carsten Rudolph, who runs the German form of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program, unternimm was, visited our team this week in Mountain View with a innovative group of startups, here are the highlights:

• mediber, www.mediber.de, a healthcare records management solution, with a unique learning capability. One of the big challenges in deploying records management in the healthcare industry is that you have to choose between structured forms or free form text and pre-define the data entry. mediber evolves with use. For a particular diagnostic area it finds patterns in entered text and structures that data for analysis. This results in easier deployment, more diagnostic flexibility and improved care for the patients. We did not see a demo, so I could not see exactly how this "evolution" works. But getting explicit data to feed diagnostics solutions is key to improved automated assistance. Monetization is subscription.
  
• Weblin, www.weblin.com, a social browsing experience with animated avatars. As you know if you have read my blog, I am a fan of Me.dium ( recently re-launched as OneRiot ), which gives you a chat/browser interface for friends who are surfing with you and an all-up radar map showing total volume and activity, but weblin takes a more dramatically social and "gamey" approach to the same experience. Your friends create avatars that represent their persona. When you install weblin the avatars overlay your browser along the bottom. Then as you browse, you will see the avatar's of your buddies that are on the same site. You can chat with them and do some basic interaction between the avatar's. Because of the overlay, branded ads can be run around and on top of the browser ( you have to download and install the client app ). Monetization is advertising and avatar sales ( i.e. you can be Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribean, but it will cost you ).
  
• VIOSO, www.VIOSO.com, optimizes image projection on any surface. This is some hard core technology packed in a surprisingly elegant manner ( this would be a consistent pattern with German software companies – think BMW ). With VIOSO you can project an image on any surface, and it will adjust the projected image so that it looks like it is supposed to. For example, one example was showing a movie on a cliff ( jagged rocks and all ), no screen needed. And it looked great. Emanuel Zuger explained that he had brought a fake rock wall to demonstrate it, but it got lost with their luggage. No problem, we did funky things with a couple of flip charts and some PowerPoint presentations and yep, it works. It's primary application now is on the high end, with theatres and rock concerts, but the applications are quite broad. I can only imagine there is a ton of math making this work. BTW, VIOSO just announced they have received funding from Hasso Plattner Ventures ( Hasso Plattner, the founder and ex-CEO of SAP ). Monetization good old buy once perpetual model.
  
• Visumotion, www.visumotion.com, a 3 dimensional viewing monitor, camera system and editing software. Every once in a while I see some technology this is just eerie, it is so new. This would be the case. You know those holographic pictures that you walk past and wink at you or whatever, its like that, live motion, on your PC. The video recorded with their camera system leapt out of the monitor. Like a 3D movie with the glasses but better, more detailed. Video games, which are rendered natively in 3D, look great. We played a car game for a bit and I felt myself urging to look sideways as the landscape rushed past. We were doing this on a 22 inch display. I want one for my XBOX and Halo on a 60 inch in my basement. No special video hardware is required, just the software and a filter, which can be added to your monitor or you can buy a monitor with a built in filter. Monetization is software applications and royalties for media using their technologies.

All of these solutions leverage the Microsoft platform in creative ways. I was a bit wary of posting a blog on these cool solutions because, well, quite a few execs at Microsoft think they are pretty cool too, but the world needs to take a look at them and help them prosper. Also of note, German solutions are typically very mature in their technology. They build and refine their solutions first before showing the world. A huge thank you to Carsten Rudolph and the Microsoft Germany team for finding these great companies and bringing them to us in the Silicon Valley to take a look.