Collanos Blog

Gartner (NYSE: IT), the largest technology analyst company in the world, predicts Collanos’ type business model will become “the most significant trend affecting information technology during the next ten years.”

The Collanos’ type consumerization business model focuses on providing consumers with a collaboration platform that will allow internet home users, university faculty, small businesses, and inter-enterprise users to benefit from the collaboration tools that only enterprises have been able to provide at an expensive price to their employees.

By differentiating ourselves from other Collaboration vendors who require the use of a server, utilize a resource expensive development model, depend on longer release lifecycles, and have their own agenda that forces the need for further infrastructure investments, we gain a strategic advantage that allows us to deliver to the consumers the collaboration tools they need at prices they can afford.

David Mitchell Smith, Gartner Vice President and Gartner Fellow, predicts that our approach “will affect every enterprise.” Collanos’ approach is much like Wi-Fi’s, smart mobile phone’s, pc’s, voice over IP call’s and conference call’s, instant message’s, and the internet’s approach. Each of these was quickly adopted by consumers who benefited from the use of these technologies in their homes, families, clubs, and organizations. Consumers then took these technologies to work and caused the viral spread that later led to enterprise adoption.

Already in our beta offering, we see Collanos Workplace being not only demanded by ad-hoc teams, but by teams in the enterprise. Enterprise users refuse to constrain themselves to their current email and server based collaboration tools. Collanos, starting with its peer-to-peer Collanos Workplace, will soon provide consumers with a complete set of collaboration tools and like that create greater demand for Collanos in the enterprise.

Collanos prides itself in helping internet teamworkers and leading the evolution of the consumerization of collaboration technologies. We do not believe collaboration tools should only be available for the wealthy enterprise but should be available to everyone both outside and inside of the enterprise.

Often I am asked what an “Angel Consultant” is, since this is the term commonly used to describe my (as well as others) role in the company. Angel Investors is a coined term in the start-up world; however, Angel Consultants is less prevalent. The one thing that Angel Consultants and Angel Investors share in common is the desire for the company to succeed in the long term as each is invested in their own way. Whereas investors put their money on the line, consultants, such as me, forsake a steady stream of income and benefits for worthless pieces of paper dubbed ‘equity’ similar to a lottery ticket.

People who like the idea of working without pay at a startup without revenue, funding, or even a fully formed business plan in exchange for what basically amounts to a lottery ticket.” It’s the chance to work for a small, high-growth tech company that could either go bankrupt or turn into the next Google.
(http://patentbaristas.com/archives/000278.php)

Bootstrapping in Collanos takes on many shapes and forms, however, its end product is not only measured in the form of input vs. output. Indeed maintaining a low cash run rate is the most explicit goal but by grouping a team of committed people, additional factors contribute to the likelihood of the start-up to mature to a sustainable company.

As I make my final stretch getting back to San Francisco, following my first trip to Collanos HQ in Zurich, Switzerland, I cannot help but reflect on the unique circumstances of this truly global start-up. We are currently a spread out team of multi-national Collanos members with first-rate outsourcing teams in Bulgaria and Ukraine (including a designer in Indonesia). Our European investors all contribute more than just cash to keep us pushing forward. Call it ‘smart money’, these investors, each independently, contribute their time, contacts and a sundry of services that allow us to keep our run rate low, morale high and future outlook very promising.

On my trip to Zurich I was fortunate to take shelter at our CEO’s countryside home with the gracious hospitality of his family. Bootstrapping 101? Yes and No. Clearly the cost savings of a two week stay in Switzerland are significant but this was not the reason I was residing in the boss’ home. Staying in his home was a reflection on the cultural diversity and team commitment inherent in Collanos. How often do you hear of an American company hosting members in each others’ homes? Not often, if ever. For my European colleagues it comes so naturally. Even to me, with my Israeli roots – where there typically is no clear separation between work colleagues and personal relationships, this was a very pleasant surprise. The intensity of the gung-ho start up mode and the 18-hour work days allow us to leverage the remote time zone differences, progress in ‘internet’ speed and complement each others’ skills wherever needed.

Don’t get me wrong, Swiss-American work cultures clash quite often. I saw this first hand and very likely will see more of it as we evolve. However, the sincere desire to build trust amongst the core team via strong personal relationships, lays the foundation to keep the team intact and not let differences (and there are quite a few) distract us from pursuing our common goal.

Since we released the beta 1 in late June 2006, we have fixed 180 bugs and issues in the product.

Previously we have been keeping you informed by posting occasional updates to our forum. From now on, we will be publishing release notes with each update or release of Collanos Workplace. This way you can easily find out what problems we fixed and on what issues we are still working. Our goal is to keep you informed regarding our product and let you know that we are listening to your requests and acting on them.

We appreciate the time you take to give us feedback.

Sincerely,

Steven Tedjamulia
Head of Product Management
Steven DOT tedjamulia AT collanos DOT com

Two weeks ago, our global startup made it to the Swiss top 50 venture list published by Cash Private Equity Magazine 2006. We were competing for the number one spot with other companies such as biotech and medical equipment ventures.

This successful achievement is another milestone Collanos has achieved and we are grateful to all of you who have helped us receive this important ranking.This success is an even bigger achievement because Switzerland’s economy was recently ranked #1 in the Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum in front of Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Singapore and the United States. Switzerland scored highest in many categories; some of the most relevant included:

• Quality of its research institutes
• Cooperation between Universities and companies
• Education of the work force
• Modern infrastructure (transportation and
  telecommunications)
• Quality of its political institutions

Switzerland’s ranking further validates Collanos’ global strategy and our decision to start and base our company in Switzerland. Our belief is that the internet has enabled startups such as Collanos to go global from the beginning. We are already gaining many customers from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the US.

Basing our company in the most competitive global country, focusing on a global market, and leveraging Swiss quality engineering with a global development model gives Collanos a strategic footing that allows us to globally differentiate ourselves from our competitors and serve a broader base of customers faster and more effectively.

Global Competitiveness Report

As posted as a comment in response to a TechCrunch posting this week:

“It appears that TechCrunch is giving a lot of coverage recently on File Sharing, with many new companies entering this space. However, the effectiveness of many of these solutions is very limited in the context of business and even more so in the context of intensive team collaboration settings.

Imagine you are working with a team on a project that involves frequent exchanges of emails along with constantly modified documents (basically what many of us do routinely these days). Supplement that with ongoing IM and phone/VOIP calls and you have a labyrinth of communication, cooperation and collaboration challenges (See very interesting article on the difference between these) with critical content scattered across a range of applications and systems.

File Sharing by itself is great for exchanging simple media such as photos and music and even for backing up files, but when a team has to collaborate on a file (s), discuss, modify, approve, version, track changes, etc. there needs to be ONE, consolidated solution in place to make it possible.

At the enterprise level, Lotus Notes and Sharepoint are common solutions to address many of these needs, however, they are costly and complex, therefore inaccesible to those of us ad hoc users or smaller businesses seeking something simple and inexpensive. Web-based solutions are…web-based, therefore restrict much of the work from being done offline and require centralized (or hosted) servers.

Although still a few weeks away from launching the fully loaded version of our free team collaboration solution, “Collanos Workplace”, has set out to take file sharing to another level. Our Peer-to-Peer, cross-platform (Yes, Mac, Linux and Windows!) solution will not compete with File Sharing solutions rather with those evolving to the next level of P2P 2.0.”

The CEO and parts of the core team at the headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, the CTO and another part of its nucleus in downtown San Francisco, USA, a software development team in Kharkov, Ukraine, as well as a number of additional small contractors and “company ambassadors” around the globe - Collanos Software is a what Business 2.0 Magazine calls a “Global Startup” in a recently published article:

How startups go global

Think multinationals have to be big? Think again. Scrappy, savvy small companies are operating worldwide in the battle for technology, talent, and customers.

Collanos is just at the beginning of this development. “We want to add additional talent to our already global team.” says Franco Dal Molin, Collanos’ founder and president, “We are ready to push the limits by implementing collaborative innovation networks and global sourcing models”.

The International Herald Tribune published an article on an important trend: European Internet and software companies are bringing to the market waves of relevant innovations. The following excerpts and quotes are taken from the article by Victoria Shannon:

• For one, companies expect and plan to have an international presence from the moment of inception, knowing that they can count on a more mature Internet as a global distribution and communications tool.
• And Europe has a head start in several technologies that are especially hot, according to Danny Rimer, a managing partner with Index Ventures in Geneva.
• Another particularly European niche is peer-to-peer computing, in which much of the work of conveying information on a network is handled by many small computers rather than one central server.

Collanos pretty much shares the same attributes and fits nicely in this “fire-catching” category. The IHT article can be found here.

Collanos Software releases its free solution making Internet-based teamwork available for everybody. Leading MBA programs are among the first to adopt.

San Francisco – June 19, 2006 – Collanos Software, provider of software solutions and services that enable teamwork beyond organizational boundaries, released today “Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta”, the first commercial and publicly available version of its free flagship application. The software is available to download at http://www.collanos.com.

Geared for wide-scale adoption by Internet users worldwide, Collanos Workplace has been designed to meet the requirements of modern mobile and dispersed knowledge workers. While existing collaboration solutions rely upon web-based platforms, Collanos’ Peer-to-Peer solution addresses the growing need of users for an online and offline solution that transparently synchronizes information between all team members.

Collanos is initially being adopted by MBA programs as their teamwork environment. The company is involved in pilot programs with leading MBA universities across the United States and Europe. Consulting, research and marketing teams are following track, using Collanos to manage their unique teamwork settings.

“MBA students typically spend more than 70% of their time working on multiple team projects”, said Peter Helfenstein, CEO of Collanos Software. “Not wasting time anymore on congested email inboxes or complex server-based solutions means simply more time for the team to concentrate on quality deliverables.”

To the question: “Is Collanos a Web 2.0 company?” Franco Dal Molin, Collanos’ Founder and President said, “Yes and no. While it has all the key Web 2.0 attributes, we are not just another web-based collaboration solution. The hybrid P2P platform, a matchless solution available for Windows, Mac and Linux, offers our users the best of both worlds. That’s Peer-to-Peer 2.0.”

Collanos’ goals are to sign-up 100,000 active users worldwide within the next twelve months and harness the internet to create a solution that truly reflects how 21st century teams work.

Effizientes Werkzeug für die Zusammenarbeit in virtuellen Organisationen

Zürich/San Francisco (USA), 19. Juni 2006 – Collanos Software präsentiert mit «Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta» die weltweit erste Version ihrer online Kollaborationssoftware. Die Plattform unabhängige Softwarelösung – auf der Basis einer Weiterentwicklung der von Tauschbörsen her bekannten Peer-to-Peer Technologie (P2P) – steht ab heute zum freien Download bereit unter: http://www.collanos.com.

Die modernen Wissensarbeiter operieren zunehmend mit Personen ausserhalb ihrer Organisationen wie Kunden, Partner und Lieferanten in Team-ähnlichen Strukturen zusammen. Für solche auch virtuelle Netzwerke genannte Organisationen gab es bis anhin nur Lösungen, mit denen online über eine serverbasierte Webplattform auf das Wissen der Gruppe und den Stand der Projekte zugegriffen werden konnte. Mit der Beta-Version des Collanos Workplace steht nun erstmals eine Lösung bereit, mit der online wie auch offline plattformübergreifend informiert und kommuniziert werden kann.

Projektorientiert gegen die Informationsflut
«Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta» eignet sich zum Beispiel für Marketing-Teams, die mit externen Agenturen und Lieferanten an derselben Kampagne arbeiten. Oder für Beratungsunternehmen, die länderübergreifende Projektteams bilden und für Vereine und Studenten. Insbesondere bei MBA-Studiengängen kommt der Workplace sehr gut an. Die Studenten tauschen sich in ihren oft parallel laufenden Projektarbeiten direkt über die Collanos Software aus, halten so die Email-Flut unter Kontrolle und können sich auf die Aufgaben des jeweiligen Projektes fokussieren.

Sicher und ortsunabhängig
Dank der Peer-to-Peer Technologie braucht es keinen Server mehr, um sich Informationen wie Kontakte, Diskussionen, Dokumente, Teamkalender, Aufgaben und Projektinformationen zur Verfügung zu stellen. Sobald ein Benutzer online ist, werden alle Informationen auf den Computer des Teammitgliedes mit einer 256-Bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Verschlüsselung synchronisiert. Jedes Teammitglied ist somit auf dem neuesten Stand und kann anschliessend auch ohne Internetverbindung weiter arbeiten und Änderungen direkt im Client vornehmen.

Kostenlos und Multi-Plattform
Collanos Workplace 1.0 Beta ist kostenlos unter http://www.collanos.com erhältlich. Der Peer-to-Peer Client läuft auf den Betriebssystemen von Windows XP und 2000, Mac OSX und Linux. Systemvoraussetzungen sind ein Desktop oder Notebook mit einer Prozessorleistung von 500 Mhz. Für die Synchronisation ist eine Internetverbindung nötig und Teammitglieder müssen gleichzeitig eingeloggt sein. Die Funktionen der Basisversion umfassen die Erfassung von Benutzern und deren Kontaktdetails, die Möglichkeit zur Ablage von Dokumenten und das Anlegen einer Ordnerstruktur. Weiter bietet der Collanos Workspace die Möglichkeit, mit Teammitgliedern weitgehend ohne Email zu kommunizieren, ein wichtiger Beitrag im Kampf gegen die Mailflut.

To accelerate the adoption of our solutions, we focus of viral marketing activities on chosen groups that truly reflect our target audience. Our first “seeding” areas include MBA students and faculty at Universities.

MBA students spend most of their time on multiple team oriented projects, exchange large files and correspond about them frequently, have different operating systems and require offline access to their files. Sound familiar?

These characteristics represent what Collanos is all about and selecting this target group was a natural choice for us. Furthermore, many of us on the team have gone through advanced degree programs several years ago. Now, as we spend more time getting to know future users of our solutions, we realize that when it comes down to team collaboration solutions, little, if not none, progress has been made. It’s the same old email, file servers and random instant messaging. Time for change!

We are working closely with MBA programs at leading universities to prepare for the launch of simultaneous pilot programs. Some of these include:

• Boston University
• Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley
• University of San Francisco
• Stanford GSB
• San José State University
• University of Phoenix
• MIT Sloan
• IMD Lausanne (Switzerland)
• University of St. Gallen (Switzerland)

Several programs have already committed to the pilot and, based on an early demo of our applications, faculty and administration alike are eager to introduce our free solutions on campus.