Q&A: Ojos' Munjal Shah (Shah’s company wants to become the curator of your digital photo collection)

Red Herring ^ | October 24, 2005

[nickcarraway]

Munjal Shah’s company wants to become the curator of your digital photo collection. October 24, 2005 Print Issue

Ojos—the working name for Munjal Shah’s pre-launch startup—is out to find a better way to sort, label, and file digital pictures on the Internet. Mr. Shah, the chief executive officer, says his company will take the Flickr (now part of Yahoo) and Picasa (owned by Google) models one step further.

“My personal collection of digital pictures is maniacally high and I cannot find the picture I need when I need it,” says Mr. Shah. And he doesn’t want to spend thousands of hours typing in names for his photos or filling in data and comments on Flickr-style post-it tags. So he hired facial recognition researchers from Stanford University to help coders develop programs that can match different photos and recognize faces as well as text. The goal: a service that can sort and classify customers’ photos for them, generating tags and labels to help users identify and organize their snapshots.

On his blog, Mr. Shah reveals that Ojos plans to offer free unlimited hosting of photos, with software to upload photos to the service. Co-founders include Burak Gokturk, a Stanford Ph.D. who holds 15 patents in facial recognition, and entrepreneur Azhar Khan.

Ojos started raising money in March and within 48 hours had banked $4 million from backers including John Malloy of BlueRun Ventures (formerly Nokia Ventures), who was the first investor in PayPal, and Peter Rip of Leapfrog Ventures.

Mr. Shah, who served as CEO of auction-services firm Andale until last year, spent two months in South Korea honing his idea for Ojos into a plan.

In these days of globalization, a Silicon Valley-based Indian temporarily moving to East Asia to develop a new technology startup isn’t strange, especially when you consider that many of the Internet’s new offerings will require ubiquitous high-speed broadband—something South Korea is practically synonymous with.

Mr. Shah recently spoke to Red Herring about Ojos and his worldview.

What would you be doing if you weren’t at Ojos?

I have a 14-month-old son. I would be playing with him all day and night.

Most overrated or annoying technology?

Google Images. We all think Google search is great and it is. Google Images, on the other hand, is just not a good product.

Innovation/scientific discovery/product you wish you’d come up with?

Antibiotics. No single scientific invention has extended the human life span and quality of life more. The Internet doesn’t even compare.

Favorite product or scientific development of your time?

Of course the Internet. Never before have people been so connected.

What is the Next Big Thing?

Digital clothing and digital items. Already in Korea people are spending $150 million purchasing digital clothing for their avatars [digital images representing computer users] and purchasing furniture for their online homepages. As we spend more time online we are going to care more about what we look like online.

I can’t live without my…

My Canon 7-megapixel digital camera. I take photos of everyone I meet each day.

Your business idol or mentor?

I grew up with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as my idols, but frankly today both seem a little tired.

Biggest career or academic setback?

I wanted my first company, Andale, to reach an IPO. After five years we have reached profitability, but an IPO is unlikely.

Food item in your top drawer?

Chocolate Pop Tarts.

Little thing that is the secret to your success?

I only try to do things that can change the world. It is not that I’m idealistic, but rather things that can change the world usually lead you to big ideas that have huge markets.

[BipolarBob]

I use Google images. No complaints here.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Food item in your top drawer?

Chocolate Pop Tarts.

Give that man the Silicon Valley Geek Medal of Honor! ;)