Topic: 6) Technology
I was reviewing 3Q'04 Texas venture capital financings in the software space and ran across an Austin-based company called Pluck, a company dedicated to making it easier to find and manage information online. Founded in 2003, Pluck received a recent Series B round of $8.5 million. Investors to-date are well-known VC firms: Austin Ventures and Mayfield.
Pluck markets itself as follows:
"What TiVo did for television, Pluck is doing for the web. Pluck is an Internet command center that takes the web to a whole new level.
No matter how you use the web today, you can do it better with Pluck. Searching? Better. Shopping? Better. Browsing? Better. News? Way better.
Seamlessly integrated with Internet Explorer, Pluck retrieves, organizes, and automatically delivers your favorite web stuff in a single-view. Pluck lets you browse multiple sites at once, share stories and folders with anyone, and it even finds things when you are not online. Pluck also organizes and stores all your Web information so you can access it from anywhere."
Given that 1) further advances of Internet Explorer have seemingly stopped, 2) the Firefox browser is making advances both in reality and in mindshare regarding both security and new features, 3) Pluck's product seems to be offered only on the IE platform to date, and 4) there may only be tens of thousands of users (before opening, note PDF file) right now, it will be interesting to see what plays out product development-wise over the next year. I like Pluck's concept of better organization. Too bad IE advances have for all purposes ceased - I have already said goodbye to IE and hello to Firefox.
For those still using IE, the Pluck software is currently *free*. Go ahead and download it.
Note to self: Revisit Pluck progress over the next 12 to 18 months as it uses Series B monies.
Steve Shu
Managing Director
S4 Management Group
Email: sshu@s4management.com
Web: http://www.s4management.com
