I have thoroughly enjoyed watching Riya grow from the little-alpha-that-could to the sprinting, chamealon-like startup it is today. They made some great decisions that I don’t think the average startup would have the foresight to make: hiring Tara Hunt to lead marketing, sponsoring TechCrunch, asking users to design their next UI, blogging about the launch period in such detail that the post should be used as a B-School text (starts here), and completely scrapping their business model in a matter of weeks for something 10x more ambitious. I have been reading Munjal’s blog for a couple months now, and I’m consistantly impressed with the intimate details he’s willing to disclose. A common theme amongst all the gutsy decisions (well, except sponsoring TechCrunch… that’s just a sketchy use of seed) they made is a respect and passion for openness. I’m a junkie for openness (I wore my GPL preamble t-shirt to work once), so I’m a big fan or Riya.
Furthermore, the new UI is hot. I can’t want to see it in action, but as long as it’s snappy I am very optimistic. It appears to have a good balance between simplicity and sophistication, a balance that rarely anyone gets right. I’ll write more on it once it’s released.
That’s why I was both happy and sad to hear the news of Google’s acquisition of Neven Vision (via Om) today. Munjal put on a brave face and tried to spin the news positively, and I do agree that it’s great that their sector is getting some more buzz, but the acquisition is a bad omen for a few reasons:
- I can’t picture there being room for more than one image facial recognition company at Google, so there goes one of Riya’s exits.
- It’s naive to assume that if facial recognition in image search is a good idea that Google will stay out of it now that they have their latest toy, Neven. So, either facial recognition in image search will flop and I’ll shed a tear for Riya, or it will take off and Google will quickly become a direct competitor with infinity dollars and brains to match. Either way, today was a dark day for Riya.
So, if you’re an openness junkie, or you just dig blindingly bright neon green logos, join me in cheer for Riya as they begin their mad dash to stay one step ahead of Google.
I’ll always cheer for Riya. :)
[for the record, I was against that ad myself...not very 'pinko' ;)]
Hopefully Google’s implementation will take a while and Riya will concentrate on building out that community of theirs to get some strong loyalty. As well, openness will be key. More API action (you know about that, right? They have a nice API) + add some more and really start to foster that development community.
They have a fighting chance when it comes to goodwill. Because Munjal and team have been so open from the beginning (both Shel Isreal and myself really pushed for that and Munjal took to it), they’ve built trust and sentiments like yours.
I’m crossing my fingers for them that they see that and continue to concentrate on that aspect.
Go, Riya Go! Indeed. :)
Wow - great post. Congrats on the job.