Austin startup Workstreamer plots ‘very aggressive’ growth
Equipped with millions of dollars in funding from Austin Ventures as well as several thousand users of its technology, Austin startup Workstreamer Inc. aims to streamline how business professionals absorb the flood of information coming their way every day.
“We want to enable business professionals to stop searching and start listening to businesses that they interact with on a day-to-day basis—think of it as the Bloomberg for the rest of the business professionals,” co-founder Suaad Sait says.
So, how does this Bloomberg-esque, anti-information-overload tool work?
Workstreamer, founded in October 2009, devised a one-click “listening platform” that automatically aggregates news, blogs, Twitter, contact networks like LinkedIn, jobs data and information from hundreds of thousands of sources, then serves up only relevant, high-quality “nuggets.”
Oh, and the Workstreamer service is free for users.
“Business professionals today are overwhelmed by the breadth and velocity of the new information economy. They are trying to figure out the best way to assimilate and use content, conversations and connections … to directly impact their jobs and, hence, their businesses,” says Hank Weghorst (photo above), co-founder and CEO of Workstreamer.
Among early users of the Workstreamer technology are CEOs, account managers, chief revenue officers, venture capitalists and Realtors. Companies on the Workstreamer roster include Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Inc., Microsoft Corp. and VMWare Inc. The technology remains in its beta version; public beta testing started in April.
“We get positiv
e comments and feedback each and every day, which is the fuel that drives us to believe that we have truly built a differentiated product that solves a very real, very big problem for business professionals,” says Sait (photo at left), who worked with Weghorst at Austin software company Ventix Systems Inc. (which was purchased by Motive Communications Inc.)
As a startup, Workstreamer is operating nimbly.
The company has an office in downtown Austin. But because Workstreamer is a Cloud-based, software-as-a-service application, about all the equipment that employees need is their laptop computers. Therefore, several members of the Workstreamer team work from their homes or at coffee shops. One of their favorite remote locales is the Little City coffeehouse on Congress Avenue near the state Capitol.
Workstreamer executives decline to reveal how much funding the company has received, except to say they’ve reaped millions of dollars in seed funding from Austin Ventures.
“Just like most startups, we are always entertaining interest from other investors who could help accelerate our vision,” Weghorst says.
Sait’s and Weghorst’s vision for the company includes doubling the workforce over the next 12 months. Currently, Workstreamer employs nine people.
“We continue to add resources as we grow. Our growth plans are very aggressive, and we will disclose details as we are ready,” says Weghorst, one of Austin’s most active entrepreneurs. He acquired intellectual property from a New York company to lay the foundation of Workstreamer.
If the two co-founders’ previous successes are an indication—Weghorst as a leader at Austin’s Troux Technologies Inc., Question Technologies Inc. and Ventix, and Sait, a veteran of numerous Austin software companies—the tech sector should get ready for some big noise from Workstreamer.
The John Egan Blog 