The round was co-led by Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures. Eye-Fi is developing wireless-enabled products and services that intend to make the “ease of use” promise of digital photography a reality. Carl Showalter, general partner for Opus Capital, and Robert Coneybeer, managing director for Shasta Ventures, have joined Eye-Fi’s board of directors.
“Digital cameras have made it very easy to take pictures, but it’s a chore to get photos off the camera to a place where you can print or share them,” said Coneybeer. “This is a very real problem affecting both consumers who own digital cameras, and companies in the digital photography industry looking to boost profits. We see a huge market opportunity for Eye-Fi because anyone with a Wi-Fi network and a digital camera is a potential customer.”
Eye-Fi was founded in August 2005 by Yuval Koren, president and CEO; Ziv Gillat, vice president of marketing and sales; Eugene Feinberg, hardware architect; and Berend Ozceri, systems architect. The team has five decades of collective experience in delivering successful products at companies including Apple, Atheros, Cisco and Silicon Graphics.
“Wireless technology can enhance digital photography and help the market reach its full potential by removing some key obstacles,” said Ben Bajarin, analyst and strategist at Creative Strategies. “Wireless networks will make it easier to synchronize, upload and share photos, and provide other valuable services like geo-tagging to indicate where the photograph was taken.” said Bajarin.
“Remember that sense of anticipation you felt when you picked up your prints from the local store? We want to bring that excitement back to photography,” said Koren. "Our services will use wireless technology to automatically upload photographs from a digital camera, making it easy for people to experience the real magic of digital photography."
Eye-Fi will use the funds for product development, operations, support, marketing and production. The company plans to release its first product, which is currently in beta trials, later this year.
About Eye-Fi - Founded in 2005, the company is dedicated to building services that help consumers navigate, nurture and share their visual memories. Eye-Fi’s patent-pending technology works with Wi-Fi networks to automatically send photos from a digital camera to online, in-home and retail destinations. Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., the company’s investors include Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures. More information is available at www.eye.fi About Shasta - Shasta Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in technology-enabled businesses serving consumers and enterprises. Located in Menlo Park, Calif., Shasta Ventures manages a $210 million fund. Shasta was formed in 2004 by venture capital veterans and has made 19 investments to date across consumer and business services, infrastructure and software. For more information on Shasta Ventures, please visit www.shastaventures.com About Opus Capital - Opus Capital is a venture capital firm with more than $1 billion capital under management, investing in committed, high integrity entrepreneurs building early-stage technology companies. The team has participated in the successful outcomes of more than 80 companies (including 50 IPOs) in the U.S. and in Israel including AirGate PCS, Electronics for Imaging, FedEx, Genesys, Harmonic, Precept Software and Vantive. Opus Capital is headquartered on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California.
