I promised. Really I did. I promised my significant other not to download all sorts of applications anymore - even useful ones. But Zapper Technologies made me break my promise, and even send off an e-card to my significant other, recommending that he download it himself. Because Zapper has a really amazing download that enables you to key in any word without too much involvement in signs and symbols, such as commas and quotation marks and reach exactly what you are looking for. No more 300,000 results per search, but an amazingly accurate score of results, the first and second prioritized to precisely match your request.
Not only do you no longer have to enter a complicated request, Zapper Technologies’ free download enables you to go deep down into dark caves, narrow bunkers and dusty tunnels where ordinary search engines fear to tread.
Nevertheless, you’ll have to talk at length with the Zapper team until they reveal anything about their download. It’s not that their weighty professor-like majesty does not understand what marketing is. On the contrary. The crash of dot-coms has taught them not to present their software as a sexy download, but rather as a high-power corporate download.
It really is just that. The founding team includes some of the best academic brains: CTO Prof. Ehud Rivlin (computer sciences), CEO Dr. Yossi Matias (computer sciences), who worked in Bell Laboratories for five years, VP R&D Gadi Wolfman, and CFO & COO Rani Attar, former CFO of Scorpio. Joining the team after it was founded was computer science and medical field expert Eytan Ruppin. The Tel-Aviv-based company has eight PhDs and a similar number of MA graduates among its 100 employees.
Just the same, the company started out after identifying a need – finding information efficiently and easily. They say that the web has two billion columns, volunteers Matias, but where are they? There’s also “the invisible web” with information resources against payment, not available to search engines or the average web user.
Going from the web to cellular, Matias says there are many excellent services, but they are not readily available. The most sought after application among cellular Internet companies with the biggest penetration, NTT DoCoMo of Japan, is an application that explains how to find the service requested. “To paraphrase the words used by a wireless player who recently visited us, the technology is amazing,” Matias says. Don’t guess here who the particular player is – we’ll come to that later.
Zapper Technologies developed a technology that provides an answer for the thirst for information on several platforms. The target audience is search engine technology providers. This means Inktomi-type search engine providers, search engines, information service providers and paid services providers (e.g. the Nexus-Lexus legal information service). In cellular Internet, it includes operators and service providers. Very wisely, the Zapper team is not aiming to be called a search engine, or fight the giants involved in this field for years. Zapper presents its merchandise as additives for existing types of fuel.
What exactly does Zapper do? Its software is capable of reading the context of what you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for information about legendary basketball player Larry Bird, you won’t get a list of birds. The search engine figures out the context by itself. It recognizes the idea of sport, and decides to search accordingly. In cellular Internet, the technology enables you to find a restaurant in New York using a simple search request, but it will also give you an option to search for restaurants in North America.
”Globes”: Why expand searching? It sounds to me like shooting yourself in the foot.
Matias: ”I get very disappointed when a travel agent takes my request literally, without using his judgment. Sometimes, it’s appropriate, but sometimes it isn’t. Here we use judgment in giving results to requests.”
How will Zapper make money? Surely not from users like myself. Zapper is selling a state-of-the-art server with smart search support, along with client software for information providers. Only a small part of the technology is found in the lovely download that has managed to break through the prohibitive barrier of new installations and which aims to spread the word (and the brand name) over the web.
What stage have Zapper’s products reached? The company has a product for Internet information and a wireless prototype, with a working product scheduled for the first quarter of 2001. It has several payment models, mainly combining a license fee and sharing profit. The accepted model in wireless is an initial installation fee, plus payment according to the number of users. In instances involving really large players, Zapper anticipates deals worth several hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, whereas deals with smaller customers would be in the range of a few scores of thousands of dollars.
Who are the giant cellular players? Zapper declines to divulge any name, but I have a hunch that Sonera of Finland is involved, since it has an innovative hand in almost every valuable cellular venture, and recently invested in several Israeli companies. Sonera also invested in a recently completed $14 million financing round, Zapper’s first.
Sonera was not the sole investor. After investing $4 million at seed, the Jerusalem Venture Partners fund again invested in September this year, together with the Reuters' venture capital fund and Israeli funds Giza and Orion.
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Business Card
Name: Zapper Technologies
Founded: End of 1999
Product: Internet and cellular Internet search technology.
Employees: More than 100
Market: Search engines, paid information service providers and cellular operators.
Customers: Guru.net (now named Atomica), flyswat.
Competition: Symbionics, Infusion.
web site: zapper.com
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Published by Israel's Business Arena on 4 December, 2000