April 16, 2008
Building the Semantic Web: more cash needed
Another Semantic Web company looking for cash: William Tunstall-Pedoe of True Knowledge says he needs $10m in venture capital to back the next stage of his Cambridge (UK)-based company, which is trying to build a sort of “universal database” on the Web.
Tunstall-Pedoe’s plan is to collect information in a structured way in an online knowledge base, making it much like MetaWeb’s Freebase (which has raised $42m.) Users could then query that using natural language questions, and an open API would make the information machine-readable.
Like Nova Spivack of Radar Networks ($20m in venture capital), Tunstall-Pedoe is a computer scientist who has been at this a long time. While on a visit to Silicon Valley this week, he told me that he has worked on the technology for ten years. Also like Spivack, Barney Pell at Powerset ($12.5m) and others in the field, he says that while it will take years more for the technology to reach its full potential, a usable consumer version could come relatively soon (in True Knowledge’s case, about a year.)
The danger for all these companies is that they stretch themselves to build a consumer service too soon, wasting cash and disappointing users in the process. The technologies of the Semantic Web may well eventually yield the next breakthroughs for organising and finding information online, but the early pioneers should be wary of getting swept up in the venture capitalists’ latest rush to find the Next Big Thing (Our own fuller analysis of the movement is here.)
Radar, Metaweb, Powerset et al have certainly been successful in raising money to finance their development and growth, and they are all making good progress toward launch. The tension for all of these is, as Richard implies, that their investors’ requirement to see a return (especially in the current financial climate) will force them to move faster than they might otherwise wish.
For other companies such as my own (UK-based Talis), existing sources of revenue enable development at a pace of our choosing, independent of third party investors (we have none), bank managers (we have no debt), and high-profile promises.
The community of companies for which the Semantic Web is at the heart of their development strategy remains relatively small, today. We are (probably) all aware of one another, and there is a good degree of communication and cross-fertilisation.
As this nascent market grows toward its potential, we are all exploring different paths. We need the bright flames of Radar and Metaweb. We also need the steady growth of Talis et al, and we all need to learn from one another about those approaches that work best and those that work less well.
So good luck to William in his search for funds; I wish him well.
Posted by: Paul Miller | April 17th, 2008 at 9:30 am | Report this comment