Happy Friday, everyone!

This week we chat with SeeqPod Co-founder, Co-inventor and CEO Kasian Franks. Kasian is an accomplished and gifted software architect, with over sixteen years’ experience inventing products that focus on enhanced search engine optimization and knowledge discovery systems. He has worked with Cisco, Genentech, Motorola, mPower (acquired by Morningstar), Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Tivo, and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.

Kasian studied at UC Berkeley, completed advanced coursework at Stanford and has published several professional papers on information text mining both individually, and in co-authorship with SeeqPod Co-founder Raf Podowski. Fueled by his passion for music as well as technology, Kasian envisioned a site where the web’s vast wealth of audio and visual media could be made available to consumers anytime and anywhere.

Kasian’s breakthrough search and discovery applications have enabled SeeqPod to deliver extraordinary access to the far-flung corners of the Web universe. SeeqPod users can seek, find and share a richly diverse and personalized selection of music and media, which can be displayed on virtually any device.

ASE: Describe what SeeqPod does and how it is special/different?

Kasian: SeeqPod’s algorithm set mimics a portion of the process of human cognition, using technology, which imitates the way the human brain associates things with one another.

This advanced search engine algorithm set and technology enabled biologists working at the Berkeley Lab to discover hidden relationships in genomic data, enabling connections to be formed between human genes based on immense amounts of context, associations and hidden relationships. It was observed that this technology could be applied to
matching, searching and discovering relationships between any objects located on the Internet.

SeeqPod is a new type of search engine. Never before have users been able to interact with their search results in such a way that they can share, save, discover hidden relationships, manually re-order and mix collections of audio, video and beyond. Our technology takes what Google and Yahoo started into the next phase of search and discovery.

ASE: Please give us some cool sample searches.

Kasian: With spell-check, which serves as a “Did you mean…” function, users are not only more likely to find what they might have originally be been looking for, but also have the opportunity to explore other suggested terms. For example, if you misspell the query ‘The Beatles’ by typing ‘The Beetles’ take a look at the choices and results you now have that may have never been apparent!

In addition, you can find 9,288 playable search results for a small group of mashups and mixes by searching for the term “vs” at SeeqPod: http://www.seeqpod.com

ASE: How do you monetize SeeqPod?

Kasian: We are currently focused on the consumer experience. Search engines and especially advanced discovery and recommendation engines have the unique opportunity to monetize every search result and every discovery result.

Today’s revenue model for true consumer-facing search engine technology companies must advance beyond the contextually relevant advertising model. For example, we might include contextually relevant products, services and merchandise along with text and image ads.

This combinatorial revenue model is significantly important for playable search results such as video, audio and music.

ASE: What about music copyright issues?

Kasian: When people place content on the Internet, SeeqPod does not police this content. Music is a subset of audio. Audio is a subset of digital content.

SeeqPod focuses on playable digital content existing on the Internet. If content can be digitized and interacted with, SeeqPod will index it and allow this content to be searched for, found or discovered. Text, Audio, Video and other creative works are found on the Internet. There is a reason digital content on the Internet dwarfs walled gardens of protected copyrighted DRM-filled content.

This is because a large portion of what is on the Internet is not copyrighted!

This is an important fact. This will lead to new models for monetizing creative works. For example, a creative work can be a blog. Does the typical blogger sell their content? No, transactions are created by things associated to their content, not the sale of the content itself.

This is key for any content producer where their works can be copied and placed on the Internet. In the future, the Internet will be the first place the consumer will look to find digital content such as video and audio.

ASE: What does the name SeeqPod stand for?

Kasian: It’s a ‘play’ on the term “seek.” The term “pod” refers to a case of valuable information in our context and a vehicle for adventure and exploration.

ASE: Do you partner with any other alternative search engines?

Kasian: We invite all alternative, vertical or specialized search engines to contact us for a new private initiative we are working on.

ASE: What’s your marketing strategy?

Kasian: This is top secret.

ASE: On the personal side- where were you born? What did you study in
college?

Kasian: Born in Berkeley California. I studied computer science.

ASE: Did you come from a big family?

Kasian: I’m the eldest of five children, one brother, three sisters and the son of a wonderful father and a wonderful mother.

ASE: How important is music in your life?

Kasian: Music is an extremely advanced form of communication and consciousness.
Music is a drug or therapeutic. Music can affect the way your DNA is transcribed and the genomic pathways of your body. Music enables flight and time travel. I’m interested in finding out how animals and insects feel about music.

ASE: What’s on your iPod now?

Kasian: Caribou and Mike Jones; everything else is playable via SeeqPod.

ASE: What did you do before founding SeeqPod?

Kasian: I spent some time researching the role hidden relationships play in Search, in the context of life sciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Much of this had to do with biomimetic approaches to mimicking portions of human cognition with largely experimental approaches.

ASE: Who inspires you in the business sector?

Kasian: Animals. Personally? Humans.

ASE: What are your hobbies?

Kasian: Surfing, reading, astronomy, gardening, financial markets, playing music.

ASE: Do you like to travel? Where?

Kasian: Absolutely, all over. Was in Shanghai last month, what a city, its like Blade Runner but without the floating cars!

ASE: Anything else you’d like to share?

Kasian: I’ll keep searching…

ASE: Thanks, Kasian!

Natalya Murakhver is a freelance writer/PR consultant based in New York City.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm and is filed under CEO Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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