Interview with Henry Hon of Vyew
|
|
“Vyew”:http://www.vyew.com is an Anytime Collaboration and Live Conferencing™ platform that enables shared visual communication from any web browser in just 10 seconds. Vyew users can create, collaborate, and communicate in real-time and asynchronously over time using Vyew’s powerful yet easy to use tools.
Henry is an entrepreneur who has previously led the growth, merger and/or acquisition of several high-tech companies, in various roles including COO of Authenex; President of ShopD; EVP of Ramex; and President of Visionex. He holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering Operation Research from U.C. Berkeley. |
What gap did you want to fill when you created Vyew?
The first-generation of web collaboration offerings, including and especially web conferencing, are limited by the need to download and/or install client software. These installs are often cumbersome and most importantly don’t allow for immediate, on-the-fly collaboration. Vyew was created with a vision to give users the power to instantly start a collaboration session. The only requirement is the ubiquitous Flash plug-in, which 97% of personal computers already have.
How does Vyew differentiate itself from the “WebEx’s”:http://www.webex.com of the world?
In addition to Vyew’s ad-hoc capabilities, Vyew is unique from the likes of WebEx in a couple key ways. First, Vyew is really much more than a real-time web conferencing product. Vyew also allows users to work on projects asynchronously over time. For example, users can create a session with project content, let their co-workers access that content anytime to review, comment or add to, then go back and see who added what, when. This means Vyew is much more relevant as a workflow tool, not just when a live meeting is necessary. Analysts covering collaboration estimate that only 10-15% of the addressable market is currently being served. We believe the difference is made up largely by small-to-medium sized businesses that have shied away from the WebEx’s of the world because of their inherent complexity and prohibitive pricing. We’ve built Vyew to be powerful yet incredibly easy to use, and the price is right to start using the product: FREE.
What is your strategy for moving Vyew from the beta release into Vyew 1.0?
As we move from beta to full release, we’ll continue offering a fully functional version of Vyew available for FREE, supported by light advertising. Vyew users that want to turn-off the ads, add capacity, and/or customize their collaboration environment will be able to subscribe at various levels. Our starter subscriptions will be priced very aggressively, helping to remove price as a barrier to entry into the world of web collaboration.
As we move forward, we’ll be adding new features and complementary products that will give users unprecedented collaboration capabilities. Vyew is also ripe for partnerships, so expect to see some motion on that font as well.
Bonus: What has been the most rewarding feature that you have developed for the site?
The most rewarding aspect of Vyew has been our ability to develop a scalable, powerful, yet easy-to-use product that’s making a difference. Vyew is already being used in over 110 countries and we receive frequent feedback about how Vyew is helping people work and communicate better around the world.
Copyright © 2007 by Sonia Aggarwal
Related Posts from the Past:
Uncategorized