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File Sharing - Sunday, November 27, 2005

Central Desktop - Profile

Central Desktop = Salesforce + Wikis + Crowded Market

HQ: Pasadena, CA

Founded: 2004

Management: Isaac Garcia is Co-founder and CEO. He was a founder and VP of Sales & Marketing at Upgradebase. His co-founder and CTO, Arnulf Hsu, worked with him at Upgradebase, which they founded in 1997. That company was a data provider to the computer and consumer electronics industries. In 1999, they also founded Vendorbase, a B2B Marketplace for computer resellers. Both companies were sold to CNET in 2002

Investors: Bootstrapped but actively raising funds.

Business Model: Central Desktop sells a hosted collaboration package that takes advantage of RSS and Wikis. It offers the type of file sharing service that has been popular with consultants and other project-based businesses. The company licenses the software from $25 to $250 per month. For that you get: sales tracking, product development management, installations tracking, knowledgebases, department Intranets, calendaring, file sharing, and more. Central Desktop had its first release in September 2005, and the UI is certainly clean.

Competitors: Jotspot, Intranets.com, SocialText, Zimbra, .

Dirt: We've done project-based work before and can see the value of Central Desktop. We also know that it's one thing to make a valuable product and another to become the Salesforce.com of your sector. Central Desktop needs to figure out how to hype the hell out of their product to get a leg-up over the hoards of other collaboration companies that have been charging of late.