alarm:clock

ASP - Monday, August 23, 2004

Six Apart - Profile

HQ: San Mateo, CA

Founded: 2002

Management: Barak Berkowitz, a former Infoseek, Logitech and Apple Computer executive, was named CEO in July 2004. Company was founded by adorable husband/wife duo Ben and Mena Trott. Andrew Anker (co-founder of Wired Digital and a VC with August Capital since then) joined Six Apart as its Corp Dev EVP. Famed Blogger Anil Dash is also a VP and Reid Hoffman, founder and CEO of Linked-In is on the board.

The Trott family (cuteness enhanced by airbrush)

Investors: Undisclosed Series A round in April 2003 from Neoteny and Reid Hoffman. Neoteny's representaive was Berkowitz, who later became CEO.

Business Model: Creators of Movable Type, a blogging application, and TypePad, a blogging ASP. Looking for a foothold in the enterprise blogging market as well as in Asia and Europe. Acquired French-owned Ublog. Ideally, non-paying TypePad users will migrate to Movable Type professional editions, which start at around $200.

Competitors: Google Blogger, pMachine, LiveJournal, Radio Userland, AOL. Six Apart has a much smaller user-base than its competitors, but has a loyal user base among professional bloggers.

Dirt: The a:c runs on Moveable Type and can attest to its quality, while also bemoaning its surprising difficulty to launch. Given its momentum out of the gates and the quality of its team, the company has nice prospects. For such a small company it has very nice entree into Japan in particular, and perhaps in Europe. For a social product like blogging, never underestimate the power of company culture. Six Apart is a likeable group that evangalizes well.