With $5.5 million recently granted them in Series A funding, Mountain View, Ca-based Eye-Fi is a company worth keeping an eye on in the coming months. The company bills itself as, “being dedicated to helping people navigate, nurture and share their digital memories” and this recent influx of finances from Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures should help that mission statement add some muscle.
The company tells us they are developing wireless-enabled products and services that intend to make the “ease of use” promise of digital photography a reality. Carl Showalter, general partner for Opus Capital, and Robert Coneybeer, managing director for Shasta Ventures, have joined Eye-Fi’s board of directors.
“Digital cameras have made it very easy to take pictures, but it’s a chore to get photos off the camera to a place where you can print or share them,” said Coneybeer. “This is a very real problem affecting both consumers who own digital cameras, and companies in the digital photography industry looking to boost profits. We see a huge market opportunity for Eye-Fi because anyone with a Wi-Fi network and a digital camera is a potential customer.”
Eye-Fi was founded in August 2005 by Yuval Koren, president and CEO; Ziv Gillat, VP of marketing and sales; Eugene Feinberg, hardware architect; and Berend Ozceri, systems architect. The team has five decades of collective experience in product development at companies including Apple, Atheros, Cisco and Silicon Graphics.
“Wireless technology can enhance digital photography and help the market reach its full potential by removing some key obstacles,” said Ben Bajarin, analyst and strategist at Creative Strategies. “Wireless networks will make it easier to synchronize, upload and share photos, and provide other valuable services like geo-tagging to indicate where the photograph was taken.” said Bajarin.
“Remember that sense of anticipation you felt when you picked up your prints from the local store? We want to bring that excitement back to photography,” said Koren. “Our services will use wireless technology to automatically upload photographs from a digital camera, making it easy for people to experience the real magic of digital photography.”
Eye-Fi also told us they plan to release their first product, which is currently in beta trials, later this year, and from what we’ve been told, it should make quite a splash. Check out www.eye.fi to find out more.
