December 26, 2009 - The Wisconsin State Journal interviews Mark Gehring, CEO and Co-Founder of BIM content partner, Sharendipity.

Executive Q&A: Mark Gehring -- Startup may change how software is developed
-By Judy Newman

MARK GEHRING
Chief executive officer and co-founder of Sharendipity
Address: 3 S. Pinckney St.
Web site:
Established: 2006
Co-founders: Greg Tracy, Dale Beermann, Jeff Hoffmann
Education: Bachelor's degree from Marquette University, Milwaukee, in biomedical engineering

--------- What if the average person, who knows little or nothing about how to program a computer, could create his own video game? Or if a small business owner could develop a unique, interactive feature for her company's Web site - without hiring an outside contractor?

That's the idea behind Sharendipity, a young Madison company that's starting to get nationwide attention. Its premise: making software tools available to the public, so consumers can use them and also devise their own computer elements.

"We're trying to change how software gets developed," said Mark Gehring, chief executive officer.

Gehring, Greg Tracy and Dale Beermann founded the company in 2006, and are Sharendipity's only employees, in offices on the Capitol Square, at 3 S. Pinckney St. Jeff Hoffman, the fourth co-founder, left the company in August.

The process is so easy that Tracy's 11-year-old daughter, Emma, has used it to create match games for learning Spanish words and for learning the names of U.S. states.

Getting a new business off the ground is nothing new for Gehring - Sharendipity is his third startup. The last, UltraVisual Medical Systems, made medical imaging software for radiologists and other hospital staff. It merged with Emageon, of Birmingham, Ala., in 2003. Gehring also helped establish Geometrics, which developed radiation treatment planning software and was purchased by ADAC Laboratories, of Milpitas, Calif., in 1996. Two of his Geometrics co-founders, Paul Reckwerdt and Thomas "Rock" Mackie, went on to start TomoTherapy, a publicly traded Madison company that makes machines and software for radiation therapy for cancer patients.

Q: How did you come up with the company's name, Sharendipity?
A: It combines our two basic concepts. We're all about serendipity, which means the accidental discovery of something valuable. And we're all about sharing.

Today, if you have an idea for a computer program, you have to find a developer and the whole creative process is interrupted. I think if you have an idea for interactive software, once you begin to play around and write it, that's where the creativity comes in.

Q: What's the business model for Sharendipity? How do you make money by giving away software?
A: Sharendipity provides the software template and shares it with computer users. They can tweak it to create their own application. If they sell that program, Sharendipity gets a percentage of the income.

For instance, a real estate agent may modify one of Sharendipity's video effects for showing properties online and then sell that value-added product to colleagues. Educators can use our templates to build teaching tools for students and then share them for free or, possibly, sell them for a few dollars to other teachers.

Q: What are Sharendipity's revenues?
A: Our revenues are "negligible" so far. We raised $1.7 million from angel investors; half of that was from the three of us. It will just take the software gaining traction in one or more areas.

For example, through a partnership with Broadcast Interactive Media, a Madison company that creates and manages content for TV station Web sites, a weather game has been created for a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, TV station in which players can shoot down clouds so it doesn't rain on upcoming events. There's thunder and lightning and tornadoes. It gets harder and harder to beat the storms. If that game is duplicated and sold to other stations, it could produce revenues for both Broadcast Interactive Media and for us.

Q: But you also have had some recent talks with some big players in the industry, haven't you?
A: Sharendipity recently won a contest from Ning, a Palo Alto, Calif., company, for best ported application - or application that runs on other social networks and was adapted to work on Ning. Ning lets people create their own social networks to exchange messages and photos. We went to the awards reception and talked to Ning executives about Sharendipity.

We also had preliminary meetings with Facebook, Salesforce.com and with Zynga Game Network, creator of some of the most popular online games right now, such as FarmVille, YoVille and Mafia Wars. FarmVille is less than one year old and has 28 million people playing the game every day. Sharendipity, for instance, could be embedded to allow users to create their own content, like having chickens flock around the farmer. Those are the types of little things that keep the games interesting. We think that could be an opportunity for us to engage their most hard-core users and potentially have them feed back good ideas to the game development company.

Our meeting with Facebook was a highlight. We presented a demonstration to about 40 engineers on how Sharendipity applications are being used on Facebook and we met briefly with CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Q: What is your main goal for 2010?
A: To try to leverage those relationships and get more people to see Sharendipity applications. Most people will just use our technology but a small percentage will start creating things using the applications. They'll take the software into new niche areas and that will be exciting.