Lachlan Brown on Mon, 14 Jan 2002 22:19:01 +0100 (CET) |
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[Nettime-bold] Getting IN with In-Q-Tel: send your business plan/proposal to theCIA to let them know 'what's coming down the line'. |
Thirdnet Ltd difference engine - cultural knowbotics: Lachlan Brown I thought I would share this important source for Venture Capital with you now that the market for IT has bottomed out at a more ‘realistic’ level so that you can tool up and staff for the coming ‘long boom’. http://www.in-q-tel.com What's interesting about this Venture Capital company, its directorship and its portfolio of technology companies is not merely that it is a CIA company, and more or less alone among VC companies seeking unsolicited business plans, but that an analysis of both the directorship and portfolio provides insight into the level of the State's current knowledge about the field of distributed computing. While it is not in any businesses interest to outline in full its knowledge-base or plans publicly, and clearly not in the interests of national security to give detail of all operations and knowledges, there seems something a little desparate in the CIA forming a VC company, putting up a web site up and asking companies to submit their IT business plans for review. I think we all know that 'Information technology' only goes so far, very little of it does what the marketing blurb promises, and that articulations of the technology in culture, employing familiar and some new cultural tactics and strategies go an awful lot further. But maybe the CIA knows this too... The Central Intelligence Agency has a non-profit venture capital arm called In-Q-Tel, with 40 employees based in Menlo Park California and $30,000,000 per annum to seed in new technology firms. The Chief Executive Officer, Gilman Louie, who was video game developer of the Falcon computer flight simulator and publisher of Tetris… says that In-Q-Tel is a way to learn ‘what’s out there and what’s coming down the line’. In-Q-Tel's address for job seekers: In-Q-Tel, Inc. P.O.Box 12407 Arlington, VA 22219 (703)248-3033 (FAX) In-Q-Tel is named for the fictional ‘Q’ ‘the gadget guru who outfitted James Bond with tiny homing beacons and ejecting car seats’, has backed the following companys: Browse3D Corp, which can show Web surfers several pages at once in virtual “rooms” that reveal ‘what lies behind the links’. Hmmm... Graviton Inc. networker of tiny sensors that relay information to detect chemical or biological agents. SafeWeb Inc. which has developed software to allow analysts to visit foreign web sites without leaving a trace they came from cia.gov. Sounds an important innovation. Stratify Inc which is developing software to find important information in ‘unstructured data’ or data scattered throughout an organizations files, in wordprocessing files, email and databases and ‘puts them together in a way that makes sense’. One has to pose the question: makes sense to whom? Tacit Knowledge Systems Inc. of Palo Alto which scans email to determine who in the organization has ‘potentially insightful expertise’ that someone else should know about. Mohomine Inc. of San Diego makes software ‘that culls and categorizes information spread across various kinds of documents – even in foreign languages’. Intelliseek Inc. of Cincinatti are working with Mohomine and Stratify (one can imagine many co-ordinations and partnerships between these remarkable companies and their board members) with a mission to monitor overseas radio, newspaper and Internet reports for current and future trends in the industry. The CE of In-Q-Tel Gilman Louie states that the mission is ‘to go after technologies that are going to get to market anyway. We want to get there ahead of time. We want to get there early”. Most In-Q-Tel employees have no experience of government or CIA employment. Reviews? David Gilmour. Head of Tacit “[Tacit Knowledge] inherited a huge technical resource that’s on our side and available with a phone call.” If you don’t mind parting with shares in your company to a government organization, especially one presently engaged in a paranoid ‘War against everyone’ remember it is ‘not for profit’, there is a distinguished history of government subsidising Small and Medium sized Employers during their start up, and I am sure you can easily negotiate a non-executive share which may ensure that the CIA does not have a representative on your board. Lachlan Brown Cultural Studies Goldsmiths College 480 Crawford Street Toronto M6G 3J8 I attach material from their web site. > From the web site: > > “If your technology rocks in one of our priority > technology spaces and youve got the team > to back it, wed like to talk to you.” > In.Q-Tel web site > http://www.in-q-tel.com. > On February 19, 1999, the Central > Intelligence Agency (CIA) chartered > In-Q-Tel, Inc., a private, not for profit "venture catalyst" dedicated > to developing information technology > that enables the gathering of accurate, comprehensive, and timely information > in the interest of national security. > The fast pace of IT development > has made it difficult for any government agency to access and utilize the latest > in information technology. By leveraging > other people's resources and its own > unique technology assets, In-Q-Tel strives > to extend the Agency's access to new > IT companies with commercially available, affordable and supported technologies. > As the CIA's IT change agent, In-Q-Tel > helps the Agency absorb new high-impact > information technologies, and assists in > achieving its IT strategy. > This makes In-Q-Tel a uniquely valuable > venture partner providing opportunities for > innovators to develop their cutting edge > technologies, access capital and the > marketplace, and enhance national security. > Its ability to provide entrepreneurs and > financiers with a thorough, complete > evaluation of new technologies represents a > distinct advantage in their efforts to bring > new products to market as quickly as > possible. > > In-Q-Tel is led by a team of executives with > successful track records as entrepreneurs and > business leaders in the technology arena. > > > > Since September 11th, In-Q-Tel has received > an unprecedented number of quality > technology business proposals reflecting > the innovation and imagination that make > our country great. These represent a tremendous opportunity for In-Q-Tel to > better serve the CIA, and support its > mission. As such, we carefully evaluate > each proposal as quickly as we can while > still performing the in-depth analysis necessary to assess its potential to > address our needs. > Once we receive a complete package from > you (including a Business Plan, > Technology Whitepaper(s) and a list > of Corporate Officers and Directors, > key members of the Technical Team > and Principal Investors), we assign > analysts from our business and technical > teams to review your company and assess > your technology, including its potential > to address challenges in our customers environment. This process takes time, but > you can help by ensuring that your > submission includes all of the requested information. > If your technology meets our needs, we will request a meeting with your company. To save your time and ours, we take meetings only after we have done this initial assessment. > We respond to each and every proposal. You will hear back from us. > Click here to submit your proposal. > > > > In-Q-Tel has assembled a talented team to work on solutions to the CIA's most difficult IT problems, and to make these solutions commercially available. We are technology experts and business builders with broad experience spanning the worlds of high tech, strategic venturing, government, and national security. > Gilman Louie, President & Chief Executive Officer > Ronald Richard, Chief Operating Officer & Managing Partner > Stephen Mendel, Executive Vice President & Managing Partner > Michael Tyrrell, Vice President, CFO & Partner > Bruce Adams, General Counsel > Eric Kaufmann, Vice President & Partner > Andy Halliday, Entrepreneur In Residence > Dominique Brezinski, Technical Guru > Gayle von Eckartsberg, Associate Vice President, Corporate Communications > Robert Stratton, Director, Strategic Projects > > > Your company or laboratory may have potential to tackle the Agency's priority problems while creating substantial commercial value by working with In-Q-Tel. > Entrepreneurial Companies: > In-Q-Tel provides a source of capital, a beta/prototyping site, a fast track to a power user, and a potential source of revenue. In-Q-Tel provides an opportunity for young companies and their backers to validate their investments. > Established Companies, Department of Defense and Intelligence Community Contractors: > In-Q-Tel can help unlock unrealized value in established companies by identifying new commercial opportunities for their technologies. These companies often have a wealth of technology, ready to be discovered, and spun out or leveraged through a strategic partnership. > Universities and Research Labs: > In-Q-Tel offers the opportunity to find commercial applications for their technologies. Universities and research labs would be more successful in licensing and commercializing their technologies if they had more access to the marketplace. > > > We back great entrepreneurial teams with frame breaking technologies that have the potential to address high growth commercial markets. Our focus is not procurement or off-the-shelf technology solutions. Rather we are seeking companies interested in strategic investment and the opportunity to develop their technologies for our customer the CIA, and for the commercial market place. > Commercial success for our partners is critical to achieving our ultimate goal of reducing the total cost of ownership of technology to the CIA. As such, we are not looking for government-specific solutions. We focus on identifying commercial analogs to the CIA痴 own enterprise problems謡here the needs of the market and the CIA meet. Our priority areas: > Internet Search and Discovery: > · web crawling, indexing, ranking > · personalization > Information Security and Privacy: > · adaptive threat detection > · network privacy/anonymity > · digital rights management > Enterprise Knowledge Management and Visualization: > · e.g. enterprise search/retrieval, indexing, access management, personalization > · data warehousing/mining > · collaboration environments > Geospatial Information Services > Distributed Sensing / Data Acquisition > > Investment Portfolio > > > Browse3D is a software company developing products for quickly finding, organizing, saving and exchanging Web-based content. The company痴 initial software product, the Browse3D Browser, allows users to find and view multiple Web pages simultaneously in a three-dimensional desktop environment. Users can organize Web content while browsing, save rooms of information, and exchange these rooms with colleagues and friends. The product also gives Web site designers the ability to present users with multiple prioritized Web pages all simultaneously viewable on a standard computer screen. Browse3D is the winner of the Comdex Fall 2001 Best Internet Software award. http://www.browse3D.com > > Graviton provides integrated, web-based monitoring and control system solutions for commercial, industrial and environmental applications over distributed wireless sensory networks. Graviton痴 solutions allow companies to remotely manage their business assets, resulting in significant reductions in operating and maintenance costs, increases in productivity, improvements in reliability and enhancements in product safety. http://www.graviton.com > > Intelliseek is changing the way businesses think about, gather and use enterprise intelligence. Its solutions solve the fundamental problem of "information overload" by searching relevant, targeted and personalized content from the Internet, intranet and extranets to empower companies with comprehensive, up-to-the-minute consumer, competitive intelligence and industry information. > www.intelliseek.com > > MediaSnap's vision is to create and drive a new standard of persistent document protection that enables customers to eliminate the burden2 of managing private, sensitive information. MediaSnap targets vertical markets including insurance, medical, financial and government markets by offering a cutting edge privacy protection document server, the PIPE (Privacy Information Protection Environment). Because MediaSnap focuses solely on document protection, they offer the latest in state-of-the-art technology. > www.mediasnap.com > > Mohomine builds licensable and OEMable software that provides a bridge between unstructured and structured data. Mohomine is a software infrastructure company who creates products enabling enterprise applications to access and intelligently utilize unstructured data. Mohomine's customers are the enterprise and the software companies that sell products or services to the enterprise. Mohomine's products are designed to be the intelligent engine that enables a myriad of different software applications. > www.mohomine.com > > SafeWeb designs 渡ext generation・intelligent security applications. SafeWeb痴 Secure Extranet Appliance (SEA) lets companies build secure extranets within hours so that remote employees, customers and partners can access internal network resources using any Web browser. SafeWeb also delivers customized versions of its award-winning technology to high-profile U.S. government and intelligence agencies. > www.safewebinc.com > > Stratify, Inc. is the emerging leader in unstructured data management software. The Stratify Discovery System is a complete enterprise software platform that helps organizations harness today's vast information overload by automating the process of organizing, classifying and presenting the business-critical, unstructured information that is usually found in documents, presentations and Web pages. The Stratify platform transforms unstructured data – both internal and external -- into relevant and immediately accessible information by automatically organizing millions of documents and displaying them in an easy-to-navigate hierarchy. > www.stratify.com > > Tacit Knowledge Systems, Inc. is the pioneer and leader in Expertise Automation for the enterprise. The core technology behind Tacit's award- winning products enables organizations to resolve complex business problems beyond the reach of other technologies by continuously discovering and delivering human expertise in the organization. Automatically and with complete privacy, Tacit痴 KnowledgeMail enterprise product inventories the most important organizational asset: employee expertise. Tacit is headquartered in Palo Alto, and has regional sales offices throughout the continental U.S. including Illinois, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. > www.tacit.com > > Traction Software is a start-up company that has developed a knowledge management software tool designed to help organizations collect, organize, and disseminate information. > > Technology Partners > > OGC is an international industry consortium of over 200 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available, widely implemented geoprocessing interface and protocol specifications. These standards "geo-enable" the Web and mainstream IT, enabling technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. http://www.opengis.com > > SRA is an information technology firm that provides services and solutions to business and government. The Company specializes in data and text mining, Internet systems development, systems and software engineering, network integration and management, information security, enterprise systems management, and e-mail management systems. Founded in 1978, SRA serves clients in national defense, health care, civil government, and financial services. > The sources are Associated Press and the > In-Q-Tel promotional website: Lachlan Brown Thirdnet -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup 1 cent a minute calls anywhere in the U.S.! http://www.getpennytalk.com/cgi-bin/adforward.cgi?p_key=RG9853KJ&url=http://www.getpennytalk.com _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold