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Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Serial entrepreneur Huang to launch Sayabit document-sharing service
By Galen Moore
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Ken Huang is helping to launch his third software venture in two years. Huang, a co-founder at Cambridge-based content sharing firm WebNotes Inc., last year launched Sayagle Inc., a mobile location-based service currently in private alpha testing. Today, he plans to announce the launch of Sayabit, a document-sharing service that combines Google Docs-like storage with the web analytics of a URL-shortening service like bit.ly.
Behind Sayabit is the 30-person team at Sayagle Inc., which splits its headquarters between Boston and Fremont, Calif. Sayagle is a location-based service that aims to link mobile users with nearby retail businesses around special deals and offers, scheduled for public roll-out in April.
So far, both ventures are pre-revenue. Huang said Sayagle Inc. is backed by private angel investors, but he declined to say how much they have invested. Sayagle has an advertising-based revenue model, but Sayabit will be free — at least at first. Huang plans to add freemium and enterprise versions of the site, available for a subscription fee.
Sayabit’s October launch is overshadowed somewhat by the fact that Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) recently began allowing Google Docs users to upload documents of any file type. Like Google Docs, Sayabit lets users share documents using a URL that links to the document.
Unlike Google, which limits free users to about one gigabyte of storage, Sayagle offers unlimited free storage — for now. Huang said he plans to gauge usership to determine where to draw the line between free and paid versions of the service. “Instead of just giving away a lot of disk space while the users are not really using the space, I think it’s better,” he said.
Huang hopes to draw away Google Docs users with a few added features — mainly the ability to shorten URLs into personalized web addresses, and an analytics dashboard that shows the document owner who viewed each document and when. He’s also added e-signature, automatic versioning and the ability for document owners to block certain IP addresses from downloading links and documents that are otherwise public.
He’s also submitted an application to Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone App Store, which will let users upload photos and share them using the service.
The site has a Twitter integration that lets users get into their Twitter homepage within the Sayabit user interface, and Huang said developers are working on a chat application that will let users discuss documents that are made available publicly on the site.
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