Startup Profile: WhosOnMyPage

Scott Hildebrand — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:58:44 +0000

Company: WhosOnMyPage
Founded: March 2006
Founders: Mike DiCarlo and Layton Wedgeworth

WhosOnMyPage just did a re-launch on February 9th, which included support for tracking the social networks Bebo, Friendster, and Hi5. This is a Sacramento company, and the guys are regulars at SacStarts dinners.

A bit of background is in order. WhosOnMyPage is a profile tracker that allows the owner of a social network page to see who’s viewing it, as long as the other user is using the service as well. The first version was launched in March of 2006 and went from 0 to more than a million users in less than one month. They had over 1.5 million daily page views and more than half a million unique users. As a result the system was tracking 15-20 million profile views each day. Then MySpace blocked the service, just like they did to other trackers such as Trakzor and Revver.

This new version is significant for multiple reasons, but mostly because MySpace and anybody else can no longer block them. It used to be that the owner of a social network page would have to place a small script in their page code, and all MySpace and their ilk needed to do to block a service was to simply block that individual script. The solution to the problem is a Firefox plugin, which does the very same thing as an embedded script and is completely outside the control of MySpace, Bebo, etc.

It’s going to be exciting to see this one unfold, and this time there’s nothing to stop them. Congrats to Mike, Layton, and Lindsay on a great job!

Startup Profile: Engine Yard

Adam Kalsey — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:20:36 +0000

Company: Engine Yard
Founded: Early 2006
Founders: Tom Mornini & Lance Walley

Engine Yard provides managed hosting services for Ruby On Rails applications. The early success of Rails-powered sites like Basecamp and the professed ease of developing web apps quickly has led to an explosion of applications written for Ruby on Rails.

Engine Yard simplifies the process of hosting large-scale Ruby on Rails sites and allows developers to concentrate on building and selling their application. By buying “slices” from Engine Yard instead of buying individual servers developers can easily grow their hosting. Have growing traffic and need more capacity? Buy more slices. Engine Yard ensures that your slices are distributed across multiple servers for scalability and reliability.

Founders Tom Mornini and Lance Walley founded a consulting company called Quality Humans in 2002 after being laid off from the wireless startup where they both worked. As Ruby on Rails grew and Quality Humans began doing more Rails consulting, Walley and Mornini saw the need for professional, scalable Rails hosting and Engine Yard was born in early 2006.

Engine Yard was started with $92,000 invested by friends and family and has been bootstrapped from there using revenue from 34 customers, each paying up to $250 per month for each slice they use or $1500 per month for dedicated servers.

Like many web-focused startups, Engine Yard operates as a virtual company. The company address is a rented mailbox in Folsom. The founders and their four employees each work from their homes spread across the country. Each founder resides in the Sacramento area.

SacStarts - Profile

Startup Profile: WhosOnMyPage

Startup Profile: Engine Yard