Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
In its very short-lived glory days, Israeli startup Tru-Media Technologies had over 100 employees, and along with Quividi (the ONLY long serving face recognition business still in operation) pionered face, eye and image recognition in the digital signage space.
Samsung partnered with them and if you believe the rumours, Nielsen even considered buying them. Very soon though it all descended into chaos, there was an ugly legal fight between one of its founders Moti Gura and some its investors (this spat reached the high court of Israel, Moti lost) and shortly thereafter the company’s employees actually asked ask the court to declare Chapter 11 on the company (in 2012 we understand).
There was some good technology there so it was not surprising that one of the investors acquired the remainder of the company, and financed their R&D and Sales.
It is our understanding that YCD has now acquired this business for a few million dollars.
December 27th, 2018 at 16:21 @723
Nope, never more than 10 employees. There were 3 CEO’s: Moti Gura (an impossibly difficult and self centered man, Ex IDF Air Force Lt. Col Moshe Shlishel who was like a gorilla with a grenade and got fired by the ultra wealthy investor Turin based Luigi Alaria. The last CEO was Jonathan Moav a long serving Tru-Media CEO. Moat was an all round good guy but the game was up and nobody wanted to do business with them. Shorten the zero’s on the end of the acquisition price by 2 and you’ll have an accurate number.
December 28th, 2018 at 16:34 @732
Mmm. If it had only 10 employees at its “good times” as the previous commenter claims, they were probably really talented ones
I mean 10 people running such a complex operation, in various countries + Israeli R&D
According to Bloomberg:
TruMedia was founded in 2006 and is based in Tampa, Florida with sales offices in the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and Italy. It also has a research and development center in Israel.
Read here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=40980869