Eric Alterman, KickApps Founder & CEO
The idea of starting the company I now call KickApps Corporation came to me in the winter of 1995, the morning after an evening visit with my grandmother. Grandma Ann was about ninety years old at the time, and we had spent a long evening eating Chinese food (Chow Mein was her favorite) and talking about her life growing up in Lower Manhattan. We had had this conversation many times before, but this time I remembered to bring my video camera and was able to capture two hours of fascinating storytelling from a women that was nearly a full-grown adult at a time when “the iceman” delivered house-to-house from a horse-drawn carriage. According to Gram, electric refrigerators didn’t make it to her neighborhood until “long after the War” (I’m still not sure which war she was referring to).
Anyway, I went to sleep that night very pleased that I had finally videotaped my grandmother and woke up the next morning with the idea of building a company that invites people to share their video memories online. Timing is everything, of course, and in the pre-cable modem era no self-respecting venture firm would touch my idea with a ten foot pole. So I put “KnowHow Video” (that’s what I called it in those days) on the shelf and began building a series of venture-backed companies based on technologies I licensed from military contractors like ITT and Lockheed Martin (e.g. Meshnetworks, SkyCross). But I would periodically return to my video sharing idea (always my favorite), and eventually built an initial prototype at www.KnowItAllVideo.com.
KnowItAllVideo was around long before the world knew anything about social networking and user-generated video, and we continue to keep that website live in its original form, mainly for nostalgic reason. Although I must admit that it stung a little bit to see the birth and explosive growth of similar sites that followed KnowItAllVideo, building a destination website was never part of my entrepreneurial DNA. My vision was always to power every website with user-generated content and social networking functionality. So KickApps is a hosted platform company designed to do just that.
I write this blog on the eve of our public launch with high expectations. We have a talented and motivated team, supportive investors and a vision that we all believe in. My grandmother is gone now (she made it to ninety-nine!), but I know she would have been proud of what she inspired.
July 11th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
If KickApps is even a fraction as successful as I know it can be, this will become one of the greatest stories ever told. I want to start bidding on the movie rights now. This is dynamite!
July 11th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
Eric,
Good luck with the launch of your latest effort. I am sure it will be another great success story. I look forward to following developments here, as do many other Zeros and Ones shareholders.
Aloha a hui ho.
Mike
July 12th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Grandma is smiling up in heaven with a corned beef sandwich in one hand & a fork full of chow mein in the other. Congratulations, we’re proud of you on earth too….
July 12th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
This could be huge. Just maybe KickApps will help us focus more resources on our content and business and worry less about having to keep a big team of developers on hand.
Way to go Eric and crew. You could be the solution we’ve been looking for.
Matthew Williams
Founder and Executive Producer, NewsFight
July 19th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
I really like your business concept. I am in concept stage for a vertical/niche community site, so this may be just what we need. You may want to consider getting input for future enhancements and publishing what is coming up next to users. One feature I will need is the a history/journal feature like Dandelife. My benchmark right now for the best community site is Multiply — they have taken it to the highest level. They would be a good one for your to watch.
July 23rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Eric, very cool story about the founding of your company, I just wrote the vision statement for Barlow Group and it has a ton to do with my grandfather.
See you on Wed
Todd
October 7th, 2006 at 10:35 am
i think your grandmother would have been proud to see this.
You accomplished what you wanted to do. i know she would have been proud of you.
September 9th, 2007 at 4:47 am
[...] KickApps [...]
March 17th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
[...] Weinrich’s point-of-view, accepting everyone that “friended” him would devalue his network. Eric Alterman, Founder and Chairman, KickApps seemed to be Mr. Weinrich’s counter-point for most of the evening [...]
May 3rd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
[...] point-of-view, accepting everyone that “friended him would devalue his network. Eric Alterman, Founder and Chairman, KickApps seemed to be Mr. Weinrich’s counter-point for most of the [...]