SNAPSHOT: Vobile

Mike's update, March 08

• Digital media company with operations in China and U.S.A.
• Vobile has 15-20 engineers in China who have been very responsive to requests from MPAA/MovieLabs so far.
• Their US team consists of the founders, Yangbin and Jian, and a few other part time consultants.
• Founded April, 2005.
• Currently in stealth mode with an expected public launch in 2007.
• Currently seeking for $5 M in first round.
• Key strategic relationships: AT&T, MPAA, MovieLabs, and Google.
• Technology: VideoDNA.
• Demo of their VideoDNA product is pretty impressive, especially on mashups, said Mike.
• Seems to be mostly just technology and do not have a business model/plan nor have they directly contacted content owners.

Quote:
"Vobile's VideoDNA is a big hit with MPAA.
Yangbin Wang, CEO of VOBILE, delivered the test platform for VideoDNA to the MPAA in LA last week.
This included a server and a client with the new VideoDNA software installed on them.
The people at MPAA said they were excided to be able to test VideoDNA as it looks like the most powerful of the systems they have received for testing.
This will enable the MPAA (Motion Picture Aliance Association) to run VideoDNA though its paces to prove how effective it can be in stopping the copying of copyrighted movies and videos on the internet.
The MPAA will be testing VideoDNA for about 6 weeks and will issuse a press release as to their findings."
Chuck Colby.

Management Team

Vernon Altman, Chairman.
Vernon was one of the first members of Bain Consulting and is very well connected (the AT&T relationship is through Vernon).

Yangbin Wang - Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Prior to founding Vobile, Yangbin was the CTO of Onewave Technologies following the acquisition of the IPTV business of YZTECH by Onewave in 2004.

Jian Lu, Ph. D. - Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Prior to founding Vobile, Jian was a principal engineer and scientist at Apple Computer. He joined Apple in 1996, and led video codec development for Apple's video applications including QuickTime, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, iDVD and iMovie. He also served as principal representative for Apple in the development of JPEG-2000 and MPEG-4 image and video coding standards. He is the inventor of 7 U.S. patents in video processing, compression and delivery.

Satya Narayan, CPA - VP of Finance and Operations
Satya has over 12 years of experience in public accounting and corporate finance. Before joining Vobile, Satya was CFO at Silicon Valley startup companies Garuda Networks and CM Innovations.

Harn Soper, Interim VP Business Development

Strategic Advisors

Wen H. Chen, Ph. D. - Chief Technology Advisor
Dr. Chen is a Cisco Fellow, IEEE Fellow, Honorary Professor at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, Tianjin University and Nanjing University of Post and Telecommunications, and Distinguished Lecture Chair at National Chung Hsing University.

Chuck Colby - Strategic Advisor, Systems
Chuck is the president of Colby Systems Corporation, which he founded in 1982. Chuck was awarded the top 10-of-the-show for the NAB Show for the first MPEG-1 Digital Video Recorder in 1994 and won again in 1996 for the development of the first MPEG-2 Digital Video Recorder.

David Liu - Strategic Advisor, Business
David Liu is a Managing Director of the Jefferies Broadview technology investment banking group. He works in the firm's Silicon Valley office and is a member of the Software, Services & Media global practice group

Lawrence Meli - Strategic Advisor, Content
Larry is President of AmericanLife TV Network. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Programming Operations at National Geographic Channel.