Hillcrest Has View of TV's Future
Hillcrest Has View of TV's Future
Rockville Firm to Demonstrate Media System at Conference
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 24, 2005; E05
Daniel S. Simpkins crosses his legs, slouches a bit in his chair and holds up a melon-size ring of gray plastic. This, he says, is the future of television.
Simpkins clicks a button on the ring and a screen full of cartoon-like images with titles such as "Music," "Movies," and "TV" appears. As he moves his wrist slightly, an arrow on the screen follows suit, gliding over categories of content that include basic cable as well as digital files that were purchased and stored on the system. A click on the movies image brings up a collection of hundreds of movie-poster graphics divided into genres such as comedy and drama. Another click brings the foreign-film images to the full screen, and with two more clicks he has selected a movie, displayed its description and made it play.
"That's entertainment like you haven't experienced before," says Simpkins, a Maryland-based serial entrepreneur who made millions of dollars with the sale of his last company. "In a couple of clicks, I get to all my content, rather than page-down, page-down, page-down. That's very powerful."
The next few months will determine just how powerful the system created by Simpkins's company, Hillcrest Communications, will actually be. The Rockville firm has operated in stealth mode for the past four years and today will demonstrate its system publicly for the first time at an exclusive technology conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. Hillcrest is one of a few young companies invited to display their wares at the San Diego event, which attracts big-name executives and journalists, and the firm's executives are hoping the exposure will boost their company's reputation in the industry.
Start-up executives say that since the dot-com implosion, large companies and investors are appropriately wary of unknown firms offering the next new thing. This week's conference will be crowded with great ideas from companies considered to be among the most promising of the nation's new technology firms, but even for them, success is a long way off. Hillcrest's executives said they are intimately aware of the challenges that lie ahead.
Their system, called Hillcrest Home, organizes the content on a user's television visually, in much the same way that software applications are displayed on a computer desktop. Then by moving and clicking the circular remote, called "the loop," users can navigate fluidly through various categories of media accessible through their televisions.
Management of the rapidly increasing volume of media being funneled into American living rooms will be at the center of digital innovation in the coming years, some analysts say. And Hillcrest is far from alone in the quest to capitalize on the need for order within the convergence of cable, the Internet, and personal libraries of movies, music, games and recorded television shows.
"There has probably been a million companies, at some point, in this kind of a space," said Stephen Baker, a technology analyst with the NPD Group. "What you're really talking about is a product that wants to be iTunes, wants to be TiVo, wants to be Windows. So it has be able to do all those things better than what other companies are able to do and package them in a way that's better than they have ever been packaged."
Hillcrest executives insist they have found the winning formula. The company was founded in 2001 by Simpkins and Peter S. Jackson. Simpkins sold his previous company, a Gaithersburg firm named Salix Technologies Inc. that made switches to enable Internet telephony, for $300 million in January 2000. For the first year of Hillcrest's existence, Simpkins and a dozen Salix alumni hunkered down in their Rockville office, intensely studying a variety of issues related to the technology industry. Out of the study sessions, nicknamed "Hillcrest University," came 12 fully formed business plans, which were debated until the team settled on the plan to build a content navigation system.
Simpkins financed most of Hillcrest's growth until 2004 when three local venture firms, New Enterprise Associates, Grotech Capital Group Inc. and Columbia Capital, invested $10 million in the firm. NEA and Grotech made out well as investors in Salix.
"In terms of new technology development, this is the most exciting company in the area. We haven't seen anything in the last year or more . . . that is as exciting or has as much upside potential as Hillcrest," said Patrick J. Kerins, a general partner at Grotech. But, Kerins added, the company's success will depend largely on its ability to broker deals with established consumer electronic companies.
A report issued by Forrester Research yesterday said that for Hillcrest, "just as with Google, the power of the system comes from a bone-simple interface backed by powerful technology." But, the report added, the firm's technology "can't succeed until consumer electronics companies, cable companies and others build applications from its basic building blocks."
Rather than sell the system directly to consumers, the company plans to partner with major consumer electronics makers, that make products such as televisions and DVD players, who could integrate Hillcrest's core software with their own products -- a sales strategy that is challenging, to say the least. Hillcrest's executives said they have already lined up several sales partners, but declined to name any of the companies. The firm plans to officially launch its technology this fall.
Hillcrest's system can also record and store television programs, just as a digital video recorder would do. And its "loop" mimics all of the functions of a traditional television remote, allowing a user to change channels and adjust volume levels by clicking and scrolling on images that pop up on the screen.
The firm, which has grown to about 30 people, has already filed 40 patent applications to protect its innovation. But Hillcrest's investors and executives know that cool technology and a stack of patents are not enough to ensure success.
"I have a saying, that a business without revenue is a hobby. . . . At the end of the day our success isn't going to be measured by patents, but by revenue and profits," Simpkins said.
Rockville Firm to Demonstrate Media System at Conference
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 24, 2005; E05
Daniel S. Simpkins crosses his legs, slouches a bit in his chair and holds up a melon-size ring of gray plastic. This, he says, is the future of television.
Simpkins clicks a button on the ring and a screen full of cartoon-like images with titles such as "Music," "Movies," and "TV" appears. As he moves his wrist slightly, an arrow on the screen follows suit, gliding over categories of content that include basic cable as well as digital files that were purchased and stored on the system. A click on the movies image brings up a collection of hundreds of movie-poster graphics divided into genres such as comedy and drama. Another click brings the foreign-film images to the full screen, and with two more clicks he has selected a movie, displayed its description and made it play.
"That's entertainment like you haven't experienced before," says Simpkins, a Maryland-based serial entrepreneur who made millions of dollars with the sale of his last company. "In a couple of clicks, I get to all my content, rather than page-down, page-down, page-down. That's very powerful."
The next few months will determine just how powerful the system created by Simpkins's company, Hillcrest Communications, will actually be. The Rockville firm has operated in stealth mode for the past four years and today will demonstrate its system publicly for the first time at an exclusive technology conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal. Hillcrest is one of a few young companies invited to display their wares at the San Diego event, which attracts big-name executives and journalists, and the firm's executives are hoping the exposure will boost their company's reputation in the industry.
Start-up executives say that since the dot-com implosion, large companies and investors are appropriately wary of unknown firms offering the next new thing. This week's conference will be crowded with great ideas from companies considered to be among the most promising of the nation's new technology firms, but even for them, success is a long way off. Hillcrest's executives said they are intimately aware of the challenges that lie ahead.
Their system, called Hillcrest Home, organizes the content on a user's television visually, in much the same way that software applications are displayed on a computer desktop. Then by moving and clicking the circular remote, called "the loop," users can navigate fluidly through various categories of media accessible through their televisions.
Management of the rapidly increasing volume of media being funneled into American living rooms will be at the center of digital innovation in the coming years, some analysts say. And Hillcrest is far from alone in the quest to capitalize on the need for order within the convergence of cable, the Internet, and personal libraries of movies, music, games and recorded television shows.
"There has probably been a million companies, at some point, in this kind of a space," said Stephen Baker, a technology analyst with the NPD Group. "What you're really talking about is a product that wants to be iTunes, wants to be TiVo, wants to be Windows. So it has be able to do all those things better than what other companies are able to do and package them in a way that's better than they have ever been packaged."
Hillcrest executives insist they have found the winning formula. The company was founded in 2001 by Simpkins and Peter S. Jackson. Simpkins sold his previous company, a Gaithersburg firm named Salix Technologies Inc. that made switches to enable Internet telephony, for $300 million in January 2000. For the first year of Hillcrest's existence, Simpkins and a dozen Salix alumni hunkered down in their Rockville office, intensely studying a variety of issues related to the technology industry. Out of the study sessions, nicknamed "Hillcrest University," came 12 fully formed business plans, which were debated until the team settled on the plan to build a content navigation system.
Simpkins financed most of Hillcrest's growth until 2004 when three local venture firms, New Enterprise Associates, Grotech Capital Group Inc. and Columbia Capital, invested $10 million in the firm. NEA and Grotech made out well as investors in Salix.
"In terms of new technology development, this is the most exciting company in the area. We haven't seen anything in the last year or more . . . that is as exciting or has as much upside potential as Hillcrest," said Patrick J. Kerins, a general partner at Grotech. But, Kerins added, the company's success will depend largely on its ability to broker deals with established consumer electronic companies.
A report issued by Forrester Research yesterday said that for Hillcrest, "just as with Google, the power of the system comes from a bone-simple interface backed by powerful technology." But, the report added, the firm's technology "can't succeed until consumer electronics companies, cable companies and others build applications from its basic building blocks."
Rather than sell the system directly to consumers, the company plans to partner with major consumer electronics makers, that make products such as televisions and DVD players, who could integrate Hillcrest's core software with their own products -- a sales strategy that is challenging, to say the least. Hillcrest's executives said they have already lined up several sales partners, but declined to name any of the companies. The firm plans to officially launch its technology this fall.
Hillcrest's system can also record and store television programs, just as a digital video recorder would do. And its "loop" mimics all of the functions of a traditional television remote, allowing a user to change channels and adjust volume levels by clicking and scrolling on images that pop up on the screen.
The firm, which has grown to about 30 people, has already filed 40 patent applications to protect its innovation. But Hillcrest's investors and executives know that cool technology and a stack of patents are not enough to ensure success.
"I have a saying, that a business without revenue is a hobby. . . . At the end of the day our success isn't going to be measured by patents, but by revenue and profits," Simpkins said.
posted by Kevin Conroy at
11:40:00 AM
