The thing that drew me to Personal wasn’t the start-up’s over-the-top ambition to disrupt the online business model.
Nor was it the fact that Personal’s offices are split between Georgetown — and Bosnia, of all places.
Personal’s impressive lineup of investors is what got my attention.
Former AOL chairman Steve Case’s Revolution LLC. Local sports mogul Ted Leonsis. Carlyle managing director Ed Mathias. Former ambassador Morton Abramowitz. Virginia venture capitalist Don Rainey. Former AOL chief executive Jonathan Miller. Even New York-based investment house Allen & Co. has money in the start-up.
Who put together this collection of heavy hitters?
The answer is a 1992 University of Michigan political science graduate and foreign policy wonk named Shane Green. He was looking for “patient” investor money after selling a previous start-up prematurely because of impatient investors.
His deep-pocketed group has put up $7.6 million, ensuring that he can nurture Personal (personal.com) well beyond its launch, planned for this summer. (Green and his team maintain majority control.)
Personal has about 30 employees split between Georgetown and Sarajevo, home to two of its co-founders.
Green, 40, said Personal enables individuals to own, control access to and benefit from their personal information now bouncing around the digital world.
Personal will do this through online vaults called “gems,” where you can store and share information such as how to work your television or contact the local emergency room — both of which would be useful for your babysitter. Other gems have more commercial value to the owner, such as what clothes you buy, what wines you drink and what kinds of electronics you purchase.
“The real magic on the commercial side is information on what you plan to do or purchase, which is the altar at which all things digital worships,” Green said.
Personal has contracts — developed with the help of the former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office — to prevent companies or anyone else from sharing your gems with others. Even if Personal were acquired, the new owners would be prohibited from exploiting the data.
There are more than 100 gems with more than 3,000 fields of data. The car gem contains your vehicle identification number, your tire pressure and the date when your next oil change is due. The food preferences gem includes allergies, religious and dietary restrictions, and whether you like spicy — or not. Imagine choreographing your dinner party with that kind of precision.
You can share gems with family, friends, employees or colleagues. Where Personal hopes to make its money is if you monetize your data (Personal doesn’t like the word “sell”) through commercial activities with companies that want to buy it. Personal wants to be your “agent,” collecting a 10 percent fee on the compensation you receive each time you monetize your data.
So if I were a user of Personal, I could fill in the data fields in my gem on travel preferences for my trip to Stockholm this summer. I would release the information to Stockholm hotels, which could compete for my business based on my preferences for a clubby hotel bar, delicious breakfasts, a king-size bed and access to running trails. If a hotel gave me a discount or cash payment, Personal would collect a 10 percent fee.
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