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Interview With Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarria, Strands VPApril 29th, 2008 at 5:35 pmSource:CenterNetworks
Allen: Can we start with a brief bio about yourself? Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarria: I am VP Communications at Strands, my background is in communications and business development, founder of a digital manufacturing company (Saktec Robotics). Strands was founded by Francisco J Martin, a European Scientific entrepreneur. PhD in Computer Science, his interests are Sequence analysis and distributed systems. He is the founder and former CEO of Isoco, Intelligent Software Components. Allen: What is Strands and where did the idea come from?
We devote of our time and energy to making web personalization more universal. In this regard, we strongly believe data portability and taste sharing will be very important for personalization… and we are working on that space. Identifying and summarizing people’s preferences, encapsulating them and allowing people to take their tastes with them from one place to another is one of our goals. Some of our thoughts are covered in this article. Allen: Can you briefly describe each of the services that make up Strands? Gabriel: Strands applies its recommendation technologies to 3 areas: 1.- business solutions: Strands helps people find content in our client’s sites: http://bizsolutions.strands.com/ It does not make any sense that online retailers show the same content to you that to me… when we have different tastes which we -in most occasions - have already expressed. 2.- social media: we will soon launch services to help people discover things they might like, based on their online behavior, and will also help them make sense of all their dispersed social media activities. We announce yesterday a cool music player for mobile devices, with discovery, community and taste sharing. 3.- personal finance: We just announced moneyStrands. moneyStrands is an online money management solution that allows users to aggregate their online financial information in one place, providing them with an instant snapshot of all their finances. It provides users with the best personalized recommendations possible, helping them find new ways to save money and invest. Allen: What’s the team like at Strands? Gabriel: The team is made up of 150 people.
Allen: Have you raised funding? If so, how much and from who? Strands has raised $55M in funding, $49M of which were raised in 2007. The 2 largest investors are: one of the world’s largest retail banks, BBVA; and the owner of a media group, Antonio Asensio. Also a VC firm (Debaeque) and the team. Allen: How are you marketing the services? Gabriel: B2B: The solution has been designed to require very little integration and set-up time, so clients can start providing personalized recommendations in just a question of hours. We have a sales team dedicated to that. Social media and personal finance: we are now in product development mode. Allen: How are you monetizing Strands? Gabriel: Most of 2007 $12M sales came from licensing the technology. We license the technology as a service to small and large players. Advertising is a very small fraction. Allen: Who are your competitors? Gabriel: There are lots of companies trying to solve the overload problem, which is great for the user!! In fact, one of these days we should publish some of our research reports with a list of all the players… Obviously there are different levels of development, but we do see there is more funding coming to this area. Some of the funded companies are here: http://blog.strands.com/2008/04/02/loomia-raises-5/ Allen: Why did you decide to acquire Expensr? What made the service attractive? Gabriel: Expensr brings an good understanding of the online personal finance space, and has created a loyal following among young professionals, without any marketing… just viral growth. They have been pioneers in the online personal finance space. Allen: What’s the Web market like in Spain? What’s hot in the area? Gabriel: I guess the biggest difference between Europe and the US is the use of the mobile web. I don’t have the last numbers, but while mobile penetration here in the US is aprox 70%, in most of the European countries is above 100%, in some cases it gets to 115%. In Spain and Europe in general, the mobile is part of the online experience, although nothing compared to Asia:). As for the hottest web property, I guess it is Facebook, sorry not to have a more original response! Thanks for your time Gabriel! Partner Links
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Earlier today 
Gabriel: Strands is a developer of social recommendation technologies to help people discover new products and services. That is our mission and where we dedicate all of our resources. The idea of a need for a new of generation of recommender systems came from Francisco playing with iTunes at the end of 2003, and from 2 facts:
