Through his interface on the web, Jeff Harris ’10 noticed a void on the Internet when it came to the ability to have group conversations. So he did what any budding software entrepreneur would do – he moved to Silicon Valley and built a discussion platform that makes group conversation and overall collaboration possible. The result is Talkwheel, a company Harris founded alone, but has since built a team to include the brightest and smartest minds of Silicon Valley. In March Talkwheel added three new members including the lead architect from IBM’s Lotus Notes, who is coming on as vice president of product development.
Talkwheel is now in the process of closing a new round of capital that assesses the company at a multi-million dollar valuation. On March 28 the company came to terms with a prominent venture capital firm in Silicon Valley to bring in funding and also use the firm as representation for their expansion to the Korean market.
Harris describes Talkwheel “as a real-time discussion platform that allows groups to communicate with one another at very high levels.” Unlike Instant Messenger (IM) and Facebook Chat, which are formatted in a static and linear manner (one comment after the next), Talkwheel visually maps out conversations in a real-time group dynamic while creating the ability to filter through large conversations making the most relevant information for a user readily observable. Harris says that IM “is fine for one-on-one chat, but hinders any sort of group of collaboration.”
Talkwheel is aimed primarily at groups. It is interesting to note that Talkwheel is not a stand-alone site, but an embeddable platform that is incorporated into already existing communities. Talkwheel is being used as means of communication within social networks, used for conducting online classes at universities and is also showing to be a mainstay in the enterprise business software area. Talkwheel can set up private or public conversations within a network.
Harris and fellow entrepreneurs are optimistic about Talkwheel's future and are continuing to grow the company. “While we’ve been recruiting heavily at Stanford -- -because of their huge comp sci. department – we’ll be happy to have Hamilton students apply for jobs and internships as well," Harris said.
Read more about Talkwheel here.
Disclaimer: Talkwheel is still in internal testing and has not launched to the public yet. The information given about Talkwheel is general and no demo was provided for the purpose of this article.
Talkwheel is now in the process of closing a new round of capital that assesses the company at a multi-million dollar valuation. On March 28 the company came to terms with a prominent venture capital firm in Silicon Valley to bring in funding and also use the firm as representation for their expansion to the Korean market.
Harris describes Talkwheel “as a real-time discussion platform that allows groups to communicate with one another at very high levels.” Unlike Instant Messenger (IM) and Facebook Chat, which are formatted in a static and linear manner (one comment after the next), Talkwheel visually maps out conversations in a real-time group dynamic while creating the ability to filter through large conversations making the most relevant information for a user readily observable. Harris says that IM “is fine for one-on-one chat, but hinders any sort of group of collaboration.”
Talkwheel is aimed primarily at groups. It is interesting to note that Talkwheel is not a stand-alone site, but an embeddable platform that is incorporated into already existing communities. Talkwheel is being used as means of communication within social networks, used for conducting online classes at universities and is also showing to be a mainstay in the enterprise business software area. Talkwheel can set up private or public conversations within a network.
Harris and fellow entrepreneurs are optimistic about Talkwheel's future and are continuing to grow the company. “While we’ve been recruiting heavily at Stanford -- -because of their huge comp sci. department – we’ll be happy to have Hamilton students apply for jobs and internships as well," Harris said.
Read more about Talkwheel here.
Disclaimer: Talkwheel is still in internal testing and has not launched to the public yet. The information given about Talkwheel is general and no demo was provided for the purpose of this article.
