Local Startup Puts Own Stamp on Postal Service

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Could a Westlake Village startup spell the end of snail mail?

Zumbox Inc. wants to take almost all the mail handled by the U.S. Postal Service and deliver it digitally.

Because the vast majority of snail mail bills, bank statements and even ads originates as digital files, the company can cut out the middleman by providing virtual mailboxes, called zumboxes, on its Web site. Companies and people can upload their mail directly to their zumbox, and then send it electronically to other zumboxes, where the receiver can open it on his or her computer screen. That would eliminate most paper mail.

Glen Ward, the company’s president, said Zumbox has created a virtual mailbox for every address in the United States, including P.O. boxes. (That’s over 150 million.) The service is free for private parties, non-profits, governments and most businesses. Ad and marketing firms have to pay 5 cents per piece of mail, which will be the 22-employee company’s sole revenue stream.

For consumers concerned about privacy, Ward said Zumbox has “bank-level security” and conforms with privacy standards for health records established by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. To use the service, customers register on the site and receive a personal identification number to verify their identity. (The PIN, ironically, is sent via snail mail.)

The company likes to tout itself as an eco-friendly and cheaper alternative to paper mail. But Ward believes that a digital mail service was bound to happen.

“There’s an inevitability that in the digital age, we’ll all be going digital at some point,” he said. “Zumbox just happens to be the first one there.”

Zumbox’s success hinges on people adopting its service after all, if no one checks their zumboxes, advertisers and marketers won’t use them. And Ward conceded mass adoption could take a while.

“We don’t expect it to happen overnight,” he said.


Gloomy Survey

Local tech executives are buckled in for a rough 2009.

That’s the main finding of a recent survey released by SoCalTech.com, an industry news Web site, and David James Agency LLC, a public relations firm in Thousand Oaks. The survey asked executives of tech companies in Los Angeles, San Diego, Ventura and Orange counties questions about the economy, including how deeply the recession has cut into their businesses and when they expect the economy to rebound.

If the responses of the roughly 150 executives who participated are any indication, their outlook isn’t optimistic. But it also isn’t too far afield of what economists and analysts are projecting.

About 43 percent of executives in Los Angeles County said they expected the economy would take at least a year to improve.

Included in that number was Jim Henderson, chief executive at Long Beach-based software company Apriso Corp., who said that he’s been through several economic downturns but this was by far the worst.

“We overheated the housing market, that drove to excessive lending, and that drove to excessive spending, and it’s all kind of wound down and come back to bite us in the rear end,” he said.

The vast majority of local executives also said they are coping with falling revenue by cutting costs, although about 35 percent had also laid off workers.

As to what would spark a turnaround in business, only 5 percent of respondents said the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus bill would help. About 42 percent predicted improved spending by other businesses would lead to a revenue rebound.

There was one bright spot in the survey: About 11 percent of tech executives reported sales had grown. Among them was Clint Brauer, general manager of Marina del Rey-based CyberRead LLC, an e-book publisher that has seen sales double monthly over the past five months.

Brauer attributed that to cost-conscious consumers looking for ways to save money, and e-books on average cost about 20 percent to 30 percent less than a hard copy.

“Anything that can reduce your costs is seemingly doing better at this point,” he said.

That’s also the situation at Apriso, whose software helps companies find cost savings. Henderson said he was projecting 25 percent to 30 percent sales growth this year.


Emergent Emerging

Emergent Game Technologies Inc., a Calabasas company that builds what’s known as “middleware” for video games, recently announced it had raised $12.5 million in funding.

Game developers use middleware to build more complex programs and virtual environments. Emergent is looking to become a player in the fast-growing middleware market, and its technology has been used by publishers like Walt Disney Co., Electronic Arts Inc. and THQ Inc. in over 150 games.

Emergent plans to unveil a new middleware product at the end of March.


Staff reporter Charles Proctor can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.

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