his company has several patent applications pending to protects its intellectual property.
“It’s really, really novel, this capacity to match via video chat,” he says.
The startup has raised initial funding in the neighborhood of a “few hundred thousand dollars,” says Hermand-Waiche. Following the launch, it plans to add one to three employees to its current six-person team, which also includes an office in Bucharest, Romania. VisitorsCafe is free to users, but the company is developing a “freemium” model where it will charge users for more sophisticated matching features—likely with an initial setup cost and recurring monthly fees. Some of those features might include matching website visitors more closely based on things like the articles they read and the specific content they view within websites rather than just age, gender, location, and the like. Hermand-Waiche also says the company is in the process of developing the technology for gaming sites that want to connect users based on interest in a specific game or type of game.
The company has gotten inquiries from about 100 websites interested in using its service, from small personal blogs to large online communities with millions of views per month. The subjects the sites cover range from gardening to fashion to guitar playing to heavier subjects such as cancer or diabetes. Healthcare has generated a lot of interest in the technology—“anytime there is a need for people to connect with others having a similar pain,” says Hermand-Waiche.
