Seattle stealth startup PhotoRocket has some intriguing news today. The company, which says it is planning on “changing the landscape of the photo sharing space,” has hired former Atlas Accelerator managing partner Michael Cockrill to lead the delivery of its products and services. PhotoRocket has also officially opened a new round of financing, which it expects to close on March 31.
That’s from PhotoRocket founder Scott Lipsky, the former aQuantive and GalleryPlayer founder (and early Amazon.com employee). Lipsky tells me the PhotoRocket service—whatever it is—will be launching sometime this summer. The company is hiring and currently has about four open positions, mostly in engineering.
Cockrill is a distinguished member of what we’ve been calling the “Qpass mafia”—former employees of the Seattle mobile and digital commerce company. Between Atlas Accelerator and Qpass, where he spent nine years leading products, solutions architecture, and technical strategy, Cockrill co-founded Mixxer, a 60-person mobile social networking company. He also has nine years of experience at Microsoft.
Lipsky says Cockrill is the perfect hire because he’s the “perfect mix of product and technology leadership. He lives and breathes products and technology, and that’s a difficult combination to find. He’s a ground-floor entrepreneur. He is a company builder.”
PhotoRocket has consisted of Lipsky and about five advisors and consultants who’ve been working on and off for about a year. Another key team member is Gary Roshak, who’s been on board since early January. Roshak came from Yahoo and Marchex, and is an expert in mobile, digital media, and interactive advertising.
The company has been in offices in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle since December. Lipsky also has plans to build a much broader R&D laboratory, and he says PhotoRocket is an example of what would come out of it.
It all sounds pretty exciting and ambitious—if maddeningly vague. And what will people think if they find out what secret products PhotoRocket is building, ahead of schedule?
“It isn’t going to happen,” Lipsky says.
