Something amazing just happened! Kooaba went through mitosis. Mitosis? Watch below:
In other words: we are happy to announce the spin-out of our sister company Shortcut Media AG. Unlike in Sheldon’s case the trigger for the birth via mitosis was not an overdose of Thai food (even though we really dig Thai food). Rather it is a consequence of recent market developments and our learnings over the last few years.
End of 2006 kooaba was founded with the vision to make the world around you clickable. This was before the iPhone revolutionized the phone market, before flat rate data contracts allowed for cheap mobile Internet access. We started a quest for use-cases, business models, and applications. And we were able to position us as one of the (thought) leaders in the mobile visual search and augmented reality space. For instance, in 2008, we launched world’s first iPhone app for visual search.
As any innovator in such a new market, we planted many seeds. In the last two years two of the seeds developed and grew. One of them is Shortcut – our app, which makes print media interactive. Today it is the largest platform for interactive print worldwide. In 2010 we started offering an API to our visual recognition platform. What started more as a side business suddenly developed significant traction end of last year.
In both offerings we see the potential for growing them into a strong tree. However, nurturing both under one roof is increasingly hard. Market and customers for the two products are very different: Shortcut serves the print publishing and advertising industry. In contrast, our API addresses app developers, and web-and mobile platforms.
Often times we were also asked: what kind of company is kooaba? Increasingly it became clear, that we are two companies in one. The logical consequence is to let both companies loose and allow them to focus fully on their respective markets.
What does that mean exactly? Shortcut is spun out as a separate business, Shortcut Media AG. (Head over to the brand new website over here). Herbert will take over as the CEO of Shortcut media, effective immediately. Herbert is the obvious choice, as he is well known with our customers in the Media space. Herbert will also remain board member of kooaba . Till will take over as CEO of kooaba and focus on developing the technology business. As co-founder and CTO of kooaba he has always been the person to deal with our customers on the technical side.
We are all extremely excited and motivated to push our endeavors to the next level. And of course, while the companies operate very independently we will continue our fruitful collaboration that has developed during our exciting ride at kooaba.
Herbert & Till