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Web's New Field of Dreams Emerges in D.C.
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"Investors are hard to find. It's hard to get to the point where you can get the connection to them," said Ann Bernard, who founded a Springfield company, Why Go Solo, that connects people who meet in an online social network offline. She said she has already lost a developer because she couldn't pay him.
Even companies that receive early investments can face hurdles on the way to the top.
Elias Shams, chief executive of District-based Searchles, which received a $1.2 million investment from entrepreneur Mark Walsh, is convinced his company can do a better job at finding information than Google or Yahoo by adding a human element. Among other services, Searchles allows members within certain social groups to tag search results to make them more pertinent.
Started in September 2006, Searchles hoped to have several hundred thousand users by now. So far it counts only about 70,000. "The growth has been due to the competition. It hasn't been where we were expecting," Shams said.
One small Georgetown company, Hungry Machine, has bucked the Web 2.0 trend and claims to be making a profit. Like Qloud, Hungry Machine makes applications that work with Facebook.
Its applications are among the most popular on the site and include a book recommendation service called Visual Bookshelf in which people review books they've read and post links on their Facebook profiles. It is one of about 15 applications Hungry Machine offers.
"Our core business is social browsing and social shopping," said one of the company's founders, Tim O'Shaughnessy, who formerly worked at Case's Revolution Health. "People are more likely to write reviews of books or write recommendations if their friends are reading them."
The company sells advertising related to its applications and collects a cut when, for instance, a book is sold through Amazon that was linked in a profile. The company also makes applications for others, earning development fees.
"People who do focus on making things a business are going to stick around," O'Shaughnessy said.
