Monday, January 17, 2011

Founder Mok Oh leaves EveryScape

By Galen Moore

Founder and CTO Mok Oh has departed EveryScape Inc., the Newton web graphics company he founded in 2002.

Oh, who announced the departure on his blog yesterday, said he wants to start another company, but he’s not sure what idea he’ll pursue, or even if he’ll continue in the computer visuals domain.

“I consider myself a fairly creative person. The company has come to the point where it’s fairly mature in terms of the team and the market. We really need to push forward - and we’re so close to it as well,” Oh said. “I’ve been there eight years and eight months. Considering myself an entrepreneurial, startup kind of guy, sitting around that long with a company does not make any sense.”

For now, Oh will retain his board seat at EveryScape, but that may change, he said. He said the company does not have immediate plans to re-fill the CTO position. “There are so many creative minds, I’m not certain that position needs to be filled - at least for now,” he said.

EveryScape makes software designed to provide slick, 3-D tours of retail businesses, especially restaurants and hotels. The company has raised about $17 million to date from venture-capital backers including Dace Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper Fisher New England, Draper Atlantic and LaunchPad Venture Group, and strategic investor SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM). Last month, EveryScape announced a search partnership with Microsoft Corp.’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Bing - following a similar partnership with AT&T’s Yellowpages.com service, which the company closed earlier in the year.
 

“There’s more deals like that in the making,” said CEO Jim Schoonmaker. The company is holding at about the same head count, roughly 50, that it reported over the summer, when it moved into new headquarters large enough to accommodate a doubling in size. EveryScape is now hiring engineers selectively, he said, but as it turns its focus to partnerships, there’s less need to hire as the business grows.

“Our growth model is much more dependent on people with cameras and companies with large sales forces than it is on hiring a bunch of engineers,” he said.

In September, EveryScape sued graphics software maker Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE), alleging patent infringement.

As of this morning, Oh was still listed as CTO on the team bios page of EveryScape’s website. “Don’t read too much into that,” Schoonmaker said. “This is, I think, Mok making a logical decision, and I think not much is going to change as a result of it, other than Mok starting a new venture.”

Editor's note: Earlier reports on the Adobe case miscategorized the intellectual property involved as copyrights rather than patents.