Kooaba to split into two companies

End of 2006 kooaba was founded with the vision to make the world clickable. This was before the iPhone revolutionized the phone market, before flat rate data contracts allowed for cheap mobile Internet access. The kooaba founder started a quest for use-cases, business models, and applications. And they were able to position themselves as one of the (thought) leaders in the mobile visual search and augmented reality space. For instance, in 2008, kooaba launched world’s first iPhone app for visual search.

As any innovator in such a new market, the kooaba team planted many seeds. In the last two years two of the seeds developed and grew. One of them is Shortcut – the app, which makes print media interactive. Today it is the largest platform for interactive print worldwide. In 2010 kooaba started offering an API to its visual recognition platform. What started more as a side business suddenly developed significant traction end of last year.

In both offerings the kooaba team sees the potential for growing them into a strong tree. However, nurturing both under one roof is increasingly hard. Market and customers for the two products are very different: Shortcut serves the print publishing and advertising industry. In contrast, our API addresses app developers, and web-and mobile platforms.

Often the team was also asked: what kind of company is kooaba? Increasingly it became clear, that kooaba is two companies in one. The logical consequence is to let both companies loose and allow them to focus fully on their respective markets.

What does that mean exactly? Shortcut is spun out as a separate business, Shortcut Media AG. (Head over to the brand new website over here). Herbert Bay will take over as the CEO of Shortcut media, effective immediately. He is the obvious choice, as he is well known to the customers in the Media space. Herbert will also remain board member of kooaba. Till Quack will take over as CEO of kooaba and focus on developing the technology business. As co-founder and CTO of kooaba he has always been the person to deal with our customers on the technical side.