Pixeom
Jennifer Fugel of Pixeom was kind enough to answer a few questions, and tell us a little bit about their product. The San Francisco company is actually using CES to officially launch their unique take on cloud storage. The Pixeom team will be at Booth #75008 in Eureka Park TechZone exhibit area at CES.
TechFaster: What does your company do, and how do you do it?
Jennifer Fugel: Founded in September 2013, Pixeom is the creator of the Pixeom Personal Exchange Network that allows individual and small business users to create, share and access content from anywhere through an external device, called the Pixeom X1. Members of the Personal Exchange Network can create virtual storefronts through Market Exchange and collaborate with other members with Club Exchange.
Why do you do it? What problem are you taking on?
Jennifer: There are many reasons why the Pixeom X1 was created. First, content storage and sharing is not as secure as it needs to be, particularly for those interested in online commerce. Rising fees and regulations become expensive for sellers, and for the general consumer, storage fees and limits can be frustration. We wanted to offer people a better, safer and more cost efficient way to protect and share content than is available in the current market.
Tell us your founding story:
Jennifer: Brother and sister, Sam and Karishma, were discussing how convenient their lives are with all the online services we have available today – from free cloud services to social networks to online auction/shopping sites. With the countless number of services available to improve the lives of consumers, they all come with limitations. Free cloud storage comes with capacity limits and usage restrictions, social networks confuse you with hidden privacy controls in order to sell your information, and selling on commerce sites is too complicated with all their rules and regulations, plus they charge excessive fees. These services exist for the benefit of the service providers, not for the customer. Sam and Karishma decided that they needed to create a product that would protect consumer’s data and wallets, while at the same time freeing them from third party control. In comes the Pixeom Personal Exchange Device and the Pixeom X1.
Tell us a little bit about the founders:
Jennifer: Sam Nagar is a former software engineer from Microsoft who worked on Windows and Virtualization. He studied at the University of Southern California and majored in computer engineering with a minor in business. He previously interned at multiple startups working on both hardware and software, two of which have since been acquired by VMware and EMC. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
Karishma Nagar is a senior studying industrial engineering at USC as well, with numerous internships at tech startups where she did UX work and product design for cloud computing products. At college, she is a resident advisor and board member of the entrepreneur club on campus. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California.
What do your current goals look like?
Jennifer: Pixeom has launched its Kickstarter campaign designed to further support awareness of the Pixeom network and raise funds for mass manufacture and marketing of the Pixeom X1. For the immediate future, the Exchanger will be available exclusively to those who contribute $99 through Pixeom’s Kickstarter page. The company expects to announce distribution agreements with consumer retailers in the months to come.
Who should visit your booth?
Jennifer: Attendees who are interested in finding out more about the Pixeom X1, a personal cloud storage device that serves as a gateway to a private community where users can share content from anywhere, interact with other Pixeom users and engage in e-commerce all while maintaining 100% ownership of data and without being subject to storage limits, rules and mounting fees. Demos will be available at the booth.
What’s one thing you want the world to know about Pixeom?
Jennifer: Pixeom ensures that users can have a range of cloud storage features without having to worry about running out of storage space, paying those hefty subscription fees, or dealing with cloud security breaches and downtime, all via a small, low-power consuming device.
Anything else you want to leave us with?
Jennifer: The Pixeom X1 facilitates three different types of exchanges.
• Document Exchange – which provides easy access and collaboration of your documents from anywhere, allowing the user to write notes and comments about files, synchronize them across devices, or restore old versions of them…all with the click of a button.
• Club Exchange – which allows users to create customized discussion boards and talk about any topic. Clubs can be private, or advertise their presence to the rest of the Pixeom Network for anyone to join.
• Market Exchange – put simply, it enables users to sell stuff easily be it on the public Internet through a web browser or within the Pixeom private network.
All content on the Pixeom X1 device is automatically encrypted with the latest security. Users can create and customize keys and passwords. The devices are expandable so users can connect them together and infinitely increase storage space, or have multiple devices mirror the data and not worry about losing anything important ever again.
We would like to thank Jennifer and the entire Pixeom Team for taking the time to answer our questions. Be sure to find them at Booth #75008 in Eureka Park TechZone exhibit area at CES.
