If you’ve attended CES recently, you’ve surely noticed that the week is slowly but surely getting longer. Sunday and Monday used to be set-up days, which we journalists could safely ignore.
Not so these days, with ancillary events like the AT&T Developers Forum and Startup Debut convincing me I had to devote yet more time to CES 2015. I’m glad I did.
Startup Debut was an invite-only press event at the Bali Hai Golf Club, showcasing startups working on everything from 3D video calling to crypto-currencies (more on those at a later date).
I demoed the video calling platform, and while it had its glitches (some of which could be attributed to the short set-up time they had at the golf club and to bandwidth constraints), it’s a promising idea, one worth keeping an eye on.
Here’s Personify in the spotlight:
Startup: Personify 
What they do: Provide an immersive video calling platform that, when used with a 3D camera, let’s you remove the background like you would with a real-time green screen, so you can interact with others in a shared virtual space.
Headquarters: Chicago, IL
CEO: Sanjay Patel. Sanjay has grown Personify from five people at the University of Illinois to a global team of more than 30 technologists and innovators, with dozens of partnerships and relationships in place with such companies as Intel, SAP, and Lenovo. In addition to his role at Personify, Sanjay has spent time as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Founded: 2009
Funding: $7.2 million in funding from Intel Capital, Liberty Global, Serra Ventures, Illinois Ventures, and AMD Ventures
Problem they tackle: Current video calling tools like Skype and Google Hangouts still leave end users feeling rather disconnected. One of the biggest problems is that they confine users to a little square box, which limits what you can do or share with the person(s) you are communicating with.
Click to Tweet: Startup Personify develops 3D video calling platform via @JWVance on Startup50: http://wp.me/p330ZZ-3l
What I like about them: Personify’s goal is to help consumers break out of those narrow communications boxes, so when they interact with others online, they can more seamlessly share photos, watch movies, or play games and enjoy a more communal shared experience.
Personify has developed the background subtraction technology that is at the core of what the company offers. With that and a 3D camera, it allows people to remove their background, without the need for a physical green screen, so they are no longer confined to a little square box.
Of course, most consumers (or businesses for that matter) do not yet have a 3D camera. However, most didn’t have smartphones five years ago either, and look where we are now. If the use cases are compelling enough, 3D cameras will be a computing checkbox in the near future.
Personify expects the adoption of 3D cameras to accelerate quickly, with many installed directly into laptops and PCs.
I gave the technology a test drive at the Startup Debut event just before CES 2015, and while it had its glitches, mostly due to the bandwidth constraints at an event like this and the short set-up time, it was easy to see just how many use cases consumers and business could develop. For instance, immersive customer service with a human face to it seems like a no-brainer.
Competitive Landscape: There’s a lot of activity in the video conferencing and VR spaces. Skype and Google Hangouts are the incumbents for now, but there’s a ton of churn.
Other startups intend to tackle the disconnected-feeling issue through virtual reality (AltspaceVR), while others are focusing on immersive voice first (take a look at my Startup Spotlight on Voxeet).
The competitive landscape is one area that concerns me about Personify. Competition will come fast and furiously from many different directions, and I’m not convinced that Personify has a handle on just how big of a pond they’re swimming in and how big some of the other fish/predators in it actually are.
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