Five years out of college, Steve Papa '94 and Peter Bell '94 wanted a beer can to remind them of Old Nassau. Milwaukee's Best would not suffice.
Papa and Bell were looking for one of the orange-and-black cans alumni order for Reunions. A slew of irrelevant eBay search results inspired the pair to found Endeca, an information access firm now battling Google for corporate clients.
"Endeca is about making it easier to find information," said Papa, Endeca's CEO.
The privately held firm, which employs nearly a dozen alumni, provides information access solutions to corporations and government agencies, including Boeing, Wal-Mart and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Endeca services allow clients to eliminate "the IT bottleneck" by guiding their use of data and documents, Bell said.
Riding out the bubble
When Papa and Bell set up Endeca in 1999, the Internet bubble had not yet burst. Venture capital poured into the unproven startup.
"The funding was unique then in that people were funding ideas. We didn't even have a prototype yet," Bell said.
For two years, Papa and Bell focused solely on research and development. Their toughest task was building a team of engineers in a market with high demand for tech workers.
"When funding was flush everyone in the world was CEO or CTO of a startup," Bell explained.
As the dot-com fervor fizzled, Endeca used its savings to hire newly unemployed computer scientists of the highest caliber.
These workers crafted a proprietary software package known as the Endeca Information Access Platform. The platform is based on "a patented meta-relational architecture" that identifies the properties of and relationships among documents and data in a corporate network.
"The Information Access Platform makes it very easy to build applications where the user is at the center," Papa said. "It's software that really accelerates the construction of search and analysis applications that will get high rates of adoption by users."
Endeca's first major client was Barnes & Noble, who retained the firm to develop the book browser for its online store.
"It turns out that what we do is highly measurable in terms of the improvement to a company's business," Papa said.
When Endeca revamped the website search function for The Home Depot's online store, for instance, sales increased between 30 and 40 percent, Papa said.
Endeca's success brought the firm to the attention of IBM, which offers competing products.
"At IBM they use us in eight or 10 different places, finding consultants to staff a project or having their end-customers go in and find the fix to a bug," Bell said.
Lacking a brand
Papa acknowledged that his firm lacked the name recognition of some competitors but attributed Endeca's low profile to its business strategy.
"We don't sell to consumers," Papa said. "We're more like an Oracle than we'll ever be like an IBM or a Google."
Bell said that while potential clients often think of Google first, Endeca's products are better suited to corporate users.
"The Google algorithms were designed for web pages," Bell explained. But companies rarely store their data in that format. "We're far better than" Google at searching corporate networks, he said.
Google representatives were unable to comment over the weekend.
Read More
GSG approves audit, delays budget approval after ‘insufferable’ meeting
Nikki HanThe final Graduate Student Government (GSG) meeting for the semester lasted more than an hour and a half when discussions over the proposed budget for the next year and a proposed Student Life Fee of $100 turned controversial.
The final Graduate Student Government (GSG) meeting for the semester lasted more than an hour and a half when discussions over the proposed budget for the next year and a proposed Student Life Fee of $100 turned controversial.
Effort to restore chapel’s pews slowly progresses
Ben GoldstonHead carpenter Jim Sullivan has been restoring the Chapel pews over the last year. The dry atmosphere of the Chapel has warped the wooden pews over the years.
Head carpenter Jim Sullivan has been restoring the Chapel pews over the last year. The dry atmosphere of the Chapel has warped the wooden pews over the years.
Metals, molecules, and medicine: chemical biology’s influence on health and sustainability
Aanya KaseraChemistry professor Chris Chang’s lab studies the chemical biology of the elements, specifically examining the roles that copper, iron, and zinc play in biology across all kingdoms of life.
Chemistry professor Chris Chang’s lab studies the chemical biology of the elements, specifically examining the roles that copper, iron, and zinc play in biology across all kingdoms of life.