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Madison company wants software for, and by, the masses

Jeff Richgels  —  8/22/2008 10:09 pm

Writing software has long been the province of highly trained programmers -- a fact many have tried to change in different ways.

One of the latest is Sharendipity.com, a fledgling Madison company that is working to "democratize" software development with new technology it says enables the average person to write software.

"Everybody uses software today, but only a tiny percentage of people create software," said Mark Gehring, 43, co-founder and CEO of Sharendipity. "Programmers create software, and they have a different way of looking at computers, so software is often hard to use.

"We turned that around. It's a Web-based, very easy-to-use environment."

Sharendipity's name comes from the collaborative nature of the technology: Anything that is created can be shared with other users.

Budding game developers, for instance, could create a rocket ship by importing an image and then linking behaviors to the image, such as "when the space bar is pushed, apply a force to the rocket." Then, another user could create an Asteroids-like game by simply dragging the rocket into a new application.

The technology allows users to piece together applications from content created by other community members. The original creators can offer their components for free, or charge whatever they think is a fair price. If someone is willing to pay, the original creator makes money. Sharendipity makes its money by taking a percentage of each payment.

Sharendipity's initial focus is the $500 million casual gaming market. A casual game is any computer game targeted at a mass audience. Typically the games have simple rules, and no special skills or long-term time commitment is required, like Solitaire or Sudoku.

But the company's four founders also see applications beyond games.

"Our contention is there's little niche markets that will find this software tool valuable," Gehring said. "And if those people can come together in Sharendipity and create something that meets their needs, they'll create value, and we'll share in the monetization of that value."

Those niche markets likely will be industries so small that the software industry doesn't find them valuable enough to write software for, he said.

For example, Gehring said that when a home appraiser came to his house when he refinanced his mortgage, the appraiser complained about the "terrible" software he used to compute things like square footage from the measurements taken of a house.

"That is not surprising," Gehring said. "The home appraiser software market may be too small to have high-quality applications, or applications may be too expensive. A niche community of home appraisers could come together in Sharendipity to create the software they need."

Sharendipity was founded by Gehring, Greg Tracy, Jeffrey Hoffman and Dale Beermann, who all worked together at UltraVisual Medical Systems. UltraVisual was acquired by Emageon in 2003.

Emageon went public in 2005, and moved its operations from Madison to the Milwaukee suburb of Hartland the following year. The quartet had made enough money in the IPO that they could afford to leave Emageon and stay in Madison.

"We didn't actually have a concept," said Gehring. "We actually sat around a conference table and brainstormed about things we might work on. We had worked together for years, and we knew all it would take was the idea, and we could build whatever that was. We had broad experience and different areas of expertise. We just had a lot of confidence that we could figure something out."

Gehring said that inspiration for Sharendipity came from his two daughters' math schoolwork.

An early idea for the company was software that would allow students to visualize and better understand algebraic equations.

That evolved into a more general platform that would enable algebra teachers, students or parents to make algebra software. But it was broad enough that other users could take the software and create physics software, or a game. The company hopes to help people create their own applications.

Sharendipity runs on top of social networking platforms like Facebook, which also helps the company better reach new users.

"We can tie into all the viral channels of Facebook," Gehring said. "So when I create something — like my spaceship for my game — and I want to share it with all my friends, they will get a message saying, 'Mark got creative in Sharendipity. He created a spaceship.' People can click on that to see it or to play the game I created."

The game creator also gains what amounts to a free marketing platform through Facebook. Players can use the social network to post their high scores, make comments about the game or challenge other Facebook users to a game.

IN addition to the four founders, the company has just one other staff member in its downtown office, which keeps overhead low.

The company was started with seed money from the founders, and raised $1.4 million in funding from the founders and local investors early this year. The company will be looking for another $3 million to $5 million in venture capital later this year, Gehring said.

The company has launched a beta version of Sharendipity.com that requires registration to get at the creation tools.

"What we're strategizing is when to do a full launch and take off the registration requirement, and do marketing and PR," Gehring said.

"I think we have over 1,500 users on Facebook, which in the scheme of things is really small," he said. "But based on our limited publicity, it's a pretty good group.

"We're actively looking for people to get in there and create things, and if they're in Madison, we could potentially work with them."

Jeff Richgels  —  8/22/2008 10:09 pm