Silence is a virtue

Tech start-ups of the late ’90s couldn’t make enough noise about how wonderful
their technology was. Now they can’t stay quiet enough.

Hilmi Ozguc doesn’t want to talk about his new start-up, Maven Technologies –
even though his last company, Narrative Communications, was one of the biggest
local stars of the dot-com bunch, pioneering the technology for animated, interactive
banner ads on the Web. Narrative aimed to reinvent advertising on the Web, and the
company didn’t mind bragging about it – like when Narrative developed the first
banner ads that could handle e-commerce purchases.

By Scott Kirsner-Boston Globe

”With Narrative, we made more noise early on because we were in the middle of a
grab for mind share in a world that was in flux,” Ozguc says. ”It allowed us to create
a dominant presence ahead of everyone else.”

In 1998, the company was acquired by Excite@Home for $96 million in stock.

These days, the art of generating buzz has been replaced by the discipline of
maintaining radio silence. ”You want to build a company quietly and in a focused
manner,” Ozguc explains. That way, when customers start buying technology again,
”you’re there, and you’re there without six other copycats along with you.” All that
generating buzz accomplishes in 2002, in addition to attracting copycats to your niche,
is to trigger an avalanche of resumes and a fusillade of cold calls from attorneys,
accountants, and payroll services in search of business.

Ozguc wanted to stay mum about Maven, but he did confirm that he has linked up
with a fellow Lotus D evelopment Corp. alum, Bill Wittenberg, who in April left
Art Technology Group, where he’d been senior vice president of software
development. Working out of an office at Cambridge Innovations in Kendall
Square, with funding from David Orfao and John Simon at General Catalyst, the
pair are developing a new kind of software platform for managing digital media.

Their company, Maven Technologies, has been described as an ”Art Technology
Group for video,” meaning that it will help companies publish video – along with audio
clips, still pictures, and animation – on their Web sites more easily, and also give
visitors improved access to it.

”The first wave of Web technology was about making pages of text more customized
and dynamic,” Ozguc says, mentioning Cambridge’s ATG and San Jose’s BEA
Systems as leaders of that wave. ”We see the same opportunity to do that with
digital media. The world tomorrow is going to be dominated by things like video and
animation and music, as opposed to text-based documents, and we want to build the
next-generation tools for big enterprises that will need to manage all that stuff.”

Maven has already done a first round of funding with General Catalyst, but didn’t
bother to announce it. The company doesn’t have a Web site, or a PR firm.

”We don’t see the need to do any chest-beating at this point,” Ozguc says. ”That’s
not important to us.”

What is important is getting Maven’s software into the hands of potential customers
for trials, which Ozguc says could happen later this year.

As Carrie Bradshaw of ”Sex in the City” might put it: Silence is the new buzz.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/175/business/Silence_is_a_virtue+.shtml