Mark Underhill says he was doing Web design and applications development for Clear Channel Communications when the San Antonio, TX-based media company announced plans to sell 448 of its 1,150 radio stations, along with its 42-station TV group. That was in November 2006.
Underhill, who had initially been hired in San Diego six or seven years earlier to run 11 Clear Channel websites, says he remembers thinking at the time, “I’ve learned so much doing this. But I could do better than this. I could build a better mousetrap.”
The following year (just a few months after Clear Channel completed its $1.5 billion sale), Underhill and his longtime friend Claudio Canive started Platformic, a San Diego startup that enables customers to create and manage their own websites. The company, which acquired its first customer by the end of 2007, has targeted the broadcast industry and now counts Comcast, the Tribune Co., and Fox Broadcasting among its biggest customers.
Platformic’s software-as-a-service model provides simple point-and-click tools that do not require users to learn Adobe’s Dreamweaver Web design software or to write computer code. The company says its hosted system enable customers to “come up with any look and feel” for their own websites by empowering people who know what a website should look like, but who don’t necessarily know how to create it. Websites using Platformic’s technology include Los Angeles TV station KTLA and San Francisco’s AM sports radio station KNBR and its San Mateo sister station, KTCT. Last week, Platformic helped launch 12 Fox regional sports websites throughout the country.
Platformic’s roughly 200 customers also include what Underhill describes as small “mom and pop” businesses operating
